DVDFile

Video: How Do the Discs Look?

Portlandia has not been designed to be a gorgeous-looking show, and keeping that in mind, these 1.78:1 1080p transfers work like gangbusters. Keep things low-key across the board, these presentations offer clean imagery in the form of crisp, well-defined detail quality, full color accuracy (both in terms of flesh tones and deeper hues), and black levels that are sturdy from top to bottom. Compression artifacting and aliasing are also kept under wraps.

Audio: How Do the Discs Sound?

No one save home theater geeks will care all that much that Portlandia: Season 2 comes to Blu-ray with lossy sound mixes, but nevertheless, it's a demerit against this high-def set. The show's loosy-goosey sound design is replicated well here - dialogue is audible, music has a strong feel to it - but it goes without saying that things could be better.