Your Thoughts: Sesame Street 50 Years and Counting DVD Set

[Oscarfan]

I had noticed (and commented on) clips looking different quality than on past DVDs. I wondered if the pre-2008 clips were remastered into HD (I have not noticed any interlacing on this set... then again, it had took me years to notice interlacing on HD-uploaded classic clips online though I'd seen fans complain about that), or if they restored different copies of clips than the copies restored for past releases (like, perhaps restoring clips from their copies of episodes for past releases, and then restoring separate copies for this), or if they restored every clip anew even if they'd been restored for DVD before. Didn't think about them changing the brightness/contrast, not sure if that's something I think about for a professional company (and would that count as a form of restoration?).

Color correction and such is a form of restoration, sure. However, these things were shot on tape, not film, so there's really only so much you can do to upgrade the footage.

 

[D'Snowth]

Not to mention film has a higher resolution than HD does (8K is so far the closest digital has come to matching film's resolution); tape, on the other hand, was pretty much invented specifically for standard definition television display - restoring tape is also essentially distorting it as well.

 

[Cookie3001]

I just got mine yesterday and I was very happy with it. Sure there isn't much rare content but to be fair a good amount of the sketches that are on yt are not from official uploads or are just in bad quality. It had many moments I remembered from when I was a little kid and loved and also the miniature picture frame it comes with is amazing

 

[minor muppetz]

One thing I’ve noticed is that in the transition before Do De Rubber Duck, there’s a sound clip of Bert making a pigeon noise. Audio of a Rubber Duckie squeaking and/or Ernie laughing would have been more appropriate for here. Makes me wonder if they planned to include Doin’ the Pigeon or some other Bert segment about pigeons (well, the set does include Pigeons, Cookies, and Trash) and then cut it from the release.

 

[Cookie3001]

The way they edited out Jim's character yelling "ya Sissie" in Everyone Likes Ice Cream was very badly done since you can hear the audio lag but I understand that they wouldn't want little kids hearing that

 

[LittleJerry92]

They could have honestly just used a post-season 1 master, but whatever.

 

[minor muppetz]

I had noticed that Put Down the Duckie ends before the ending music. I wondered if that would count as an edit, but I checked for past uploads of the non-celebrity version and it also ends at that point, making me wonder if the very end (Hoots turning his head and nodding) had the music or if it was added there when they edited the celebrity version (since the music that the band plays at the very beginning is different between the two versions as well), perhaps it was post-Roll and then they added some music (perhaps making it no longer post-roll?).

I am glad that the wiki already had a guide to the episode with that version of I Love Trash, otherwise it would be this sets equivalent to “bring your own can night”. Of course we had already seen a portion of the scene years ago, but the clip has people wondering where the trash can came from and Oscar talking about moving into it, stuff that seem odd out of context. I wonder if Joe tried to get that street story on disc 2 and settled for just the clip, or if it was just a case of wanting to include a different version of a commonly-released song than the “go to” version.

They could have honestly just used a post-season 1 master, but whatever.

how do we know they didn’t use a post-season one master? I have wondered if that’s how it was edited back then. Hopefully soon Scott or Shane will get a post-season one episode with the segment and be able to confirm if it was edited that way (could Joe from Toughpigs confirm it?).

 

[minor muppetz]

Given that the set doesn’t have anything too obscure/confusing for casual fans (I guess the most confusing might be a Brian Meehl Telly clip), and given a few of the edits (that had occurred in later broadcasts of those skits), it makes me wonder, if a pre-season 20 Monsterpiece Theater segment had been included, would it have had the altered introduction or the original?

Then again, we did get Lefty the Salesman and Don Music (though it’s a sketch where Don only bangs his head once).

I wonder what Joe’s hardest decisions were in terms of characters or recurring segments, like if he had trouble deciding on one segment for certain old school characters (or if any were excluded because he couldn’t decide).

I noticed that we didn’t get many recurring segments, just the most important old school ones (Waiter Grover, Sesame Street News, Monsterpiece Theater, and Super Grover), plus Cookie’s Crumby Pictures (the best of the long form recurring sketches - and I am glad we didn’t get too many of those) and Here is Your Life. We didn’t get any recurring segments that haven’t been on video before (like Miami Mice or Mysterious Theater), and it’s seems they were focusing on the longer-running ones with a lot of segments to pick from (Here is Your Life doesn’t really have that many - 9 by my count - but the segments were spread out over at least 18 seasons).

 

[Oscarfan]

I wonder what Joe’s hardest decisions were in terms of characters or recurring segments, like if he had trouble deciding on one segment for certain old school characters (or if any were excluded because he couldn’t decide).

I honestly don't think he was actively thinking "Oh, I have to make sure such-and-such character is included." It was probably moreso, "Hey, 'Shapes in My Room' is a great song! Put that on there!"

 

[MuppetSpot]

I honestly don't think he was actively thinking "Oh, I have to make sure such-and-such character is included." It was probably moreso, "Hey, 'Shapes in My Room' is a great song! Put that on there!"

I am quite glad Shapes made it on, I like having segments that don’t have much love on DVD.