Play With Me Sesame – Good Night Sesame + Playtime With Grover (DVD + CD-ROM Sets/Genius Entertainment)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: B     Episodes: B

 

 

Sesame Street lives and the longest-running children’s television program of all time continues with specialty DVD releases outside of the regular series episodes.  Genius Entertainment and Sesame Street Workshop offer two new DVD-Video/CD-ROM sets in nice yellow cases with handles that children can even wrap their hands around.  The Play With Me Sesame series offers Good Night Sesame about the end of the day and Playtime With Grover where the original energy-laden Muppet boogies down and shares a good time for all.

 

The difference between these hour-long shows and a usual broadcast is that the broadcast shows try to teach several lessons at once, usually about letter and numbers.  In these shows, each focuses on activities to be more active or on how to conclude after said activities.  It is a nice change of pace and unlike most children’s programming that tries to be entertaining and even sell toys, these are very well thought out and constructive.  Most importantly, they give the young viewer all the room they need to think, roam and learn.  Wish more programming for this youngest and most sensitive of audiences was this good.

 

The 1.33 x 1 image on both programs are clean, clear NTSC analog video with the usual variety of live action and animated shorts the series made famous.  Very little softness and hardly any aliasing is a plus.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is just fine for children, the kind of sound that carries over to the CD-ROM game discs included in both sets.  Those bonus discs have nice child-friendly digital graphics and helps them learn the basics of web operation and PC control.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo