Silver Spoons tv show, any chance itll come this year? (1 Viewer)

[MatthewA]

The low watermark of picture quality of videotaped shows (as this was) on DVD is All in the Family. It can't possibly be worse than that.

Unfortunately he doesn't mention the running times of episodes.

 

[Pavan_P]

DVDTalk can't post that review until June 5. Sony only allows 2-week before street. Or else we at SitcomsOnline.com would have posted it. Anyway, the episodes are all unedited at 24:10ish. More details in the review, including details on additional scenes being added to the pilot!

 

[MatthewA]

Additional scenes? Wow!

Nice to know they at least got the running times right.

 

[Stephen Wight]

They had the review for Seinfeld season 8 posted since May 15.

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

I thought everyone knew that these would be uncut, since tv shows on dvd a while back, posted the dvd backcover with the running time right on it.Great to hear about the additional pilot scenes though.

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

Someone at the silver spoons message board, at sitcoms online.com has posted that he got an early copy, he has watched the pilot so far and that picture quality is really good !

 

[Pavan_P]

Here is the review:

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/silvers...dvdreview.html

 

[Jon Martin]

Good review, but is it just me or is the font on Sitcoms Online impossible to read.

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

Great review, Ill be getting this.

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

I have a question for the person who reviewed this at sitcoms online. Is the dvd picture quality on silver spoons, better than say diffrent strokes season 1, or the same or worse ?

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

Ive just got confirmation from a certain online retailer, that my season 1 shipped !!! With a little luck ,I might recieve mine here in Greece by street date!I cant wait, I havent seen an episode since when I used to live in U.S.A. .

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

Hey everyone, Ive just found a silver spoons dvd review with screenshots galore from the dvd set !!! Go to ultimate disney.com and scroll down the middle of the page , and click on the link.I know computer screenshots arent a perfect indication, but if the episodes look that good im happy.

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

Ive recieved mine today ! I watched the first 2 episodes and the picture quality is about what I expected it to be, not bad at all.This might not be a good example , but if you own the first 2 seasons of punky brewster, the picture quality here on silver spoons is a whole lot better.I hope this sells as many copies as sony wants, so that we see season 2 with extras this time ! Also, since ive seen the pilot today for the first time in many years , I have no idea what the added scenes were.When you guys get a chance to view the pilot , if possible can you point out what was added?

 

[MatthewA]

I've only seen the NBC Daytime version which was 22 minutes with the same edits as the original syndication run.

Tony, how big is your TV set?

 

[MatthewA]

I picked up the set. Watching it on a Samsung HL6187w with a PS3, it looks about the same as the other 70s/80s videotaped sitcoms (Thank God they got rid of the ghastly 70s orange and brown color schemes by 1982). The sound is OK, but overcompressed at 192 kbps. (The home video logo gets 448 kbps, go figure) I knew this wasn't going to look like it was shot yesterday. It's 1" analog tape and it reveals its source limitations. The Punky Brewster DVDs were obviously not taken from early-generation tapes (Shout! may not have had the budget to have the original 1" tapes transferred to a non-obsolete format), whereas Sony obviously has access to its own vault archives.

I'm having fun watching this, interspersing it with What's Happening Now & Welcome Back Kotter; nothing profound or revolutionary, but a pretty solid family show all around. I think it gets better as it goes on as the actors get more comfortable with their characters, and the delivery of the jokes seems more natural. Then again the first episodes are never, ever the best ones of any series. (BTW, the doorbell is the exact same tone and notes as The Jeffersons' apartment)

I know the scene where Kate tells Ricky he has to go back to the Military Academy was not in the NBC daytime version. And on NBC daytime it cuts off after the director/writer/etc credits.

Oh and Sony, thanks for keeping the Embassy logo intact on all but 1 episode. Now could you leave in Screen Gems, Columbia Pictures TV, and all the other old logos on other shows too?

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

Hi Matthew, Im watching these on a 32 inch sony tft display and on a 25 inch samsung tft .Im glad you agree that these look better than punky.I also agrre about the audio, on some episodes I found myself turing it up more than halfway just to hear it clearly !

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

Speaking of the embassy logo , on some it doesnt have the embassy song, cause the silver spoons tune plays all the way to the end of the episode.But im glad it showed up later in the set.Ive seen up to episode 9 so far.

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

One last update on the set, since release day up to today, on the amazon.com sales rank , silver spoons has been anywhere from # 90 to 230.Meaning this is selling almost as good as the facts of life sets when they first came out. I think season 2 is a no brainer for release in the beggining of 2008 !

 

[Pavan_P]

That's because the logo was embedded into the closing credits for those episodes. You'll see the white logo for Embassy during the actual closing credits.

There is only one episode where they removed the Embassy logo completely.

 

[MatthewA]

I know people are already ready to write the set off as a sales disaster when it's been out for four days, but I should say that someone in the "Maude" thread talked about an article in Variety (which I could not find online) where Sony was, from what I could gather, going to cut back on TV show DVDs unless they sold as well as Seinfeld, and they said something to the effect of "fans can have season 1 and be happy with it".

I think that the reason many shows fail to move DVDs is not lack of interest, but lack of awareness. Another thread here talked about a man whose favorite show was the 1950s western "Cheyenne." He had no idea it was available on DVD. Go figure. The studios don't even release sales figures, just vague statements about "poor sales" or "unmet expectations." They're new at this. Their business models were made for movies.

The Facts of Life apparently did well, someone said its sales were on a par with those Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie (how's that for a show that's seldom rerun?), but it just vanished off the radar. Keep in mind that the cast of that show appeared on TV promoting the DVD. Everyone from this show is alive except Franklyn Seales and would probably be thrilled at the chance to promote the disc.

We're talking about a studio who had a representative who publicly said "who needs more than 1 season of Sanford and Son," and this was a show that sold well and was released in its entirety. The fact that the planned extras were jettisoned, that no promotion is being done, and the cover uses the most generic font and design possible rather than the stylized one used in the credits (same deal with the upcoming Benson S1), and I wonder about Sony's level of faith in this or any pre-1990 series (and if it predates Bewitched, then forget about it even showing up!). They need to put their best foot forward if they want any of these shows to succeed. If it wasn't for the lady who wrote the book about the show going to bat for it, we probably wouldn't see it at all. Heck, I'll gladly offer my consultations to the studios for free. That they follow my advice is all the payment I could ask.

One thing to remeber is that most shows from the 1980s are at a disadvantage in terms of exposure: as shows like this were going into syndication, TV stations started jettisoning old reruns for infomercials and talk shows. Syndication is where shows like I Love Lucy, Andy Griffith, The Brady Bunch, Gilligan's Island, Sanford & Son, Bewitched, etc., attracted tons of fans who weren't even alive for these shows' original runs. These shows had decades and decades of exposure in local time slots before the Oprah/Jerry/Maury/Ricki/Geraldo/Montel onslaught.

Cable TV is a joke. Anything by owned by Viacom turns into a pathetic shell of its former self within a few years. TV Land is a graveyard for old TV shows; once they show something, no one else will touch it. Even the almighty Cheers is disappearing from syndication. Sony isn't much better with Game Show Network. Fox was going to start a classic TV cable network but scrapped it due to the 9/11 attacks.