Site Data Search

A page detailing a collection of things still needing research, or that is lost and requiring proper documentation. As always, if you own any piece of media or item, be sure to scan them, dump their contents, measure them, and document on the wiki anything you can describe, you could be the only owner of that item. Feel free to add viable entries onto this page if you think there's more that can be presented, but leave discussion and comments to the Discussion tab of this page

CEC Dance - Grammy
ShowBiz Corporate throughout the late 80's began to synch up CEC and SPP showtapes, releasing around the same time and with similar themes. Oddly, the CEC showtape release for October 1988 is absent, which would have synched up with SPP Dance - Grammy. As of current knowledge, the September show continued on until the Christmas show later that year. The release of its SPP counterpart, alongside Showbiz Pizza Program 14 which would have came with it being produced, it is unknown if there may have been a CEC Dance - Grammy type showtape in this slot that we aren't aware of yet.

Strike It Up
Strike It Up is the August 1996 CEC Live show. The song's audio has been found, but is missing the initial announcer voice and countdown. Only a single second of the tape video has been found, though it is believed that parts from the August 1996 show used bluescreen footage from Strike It Up. Signals are also missing for this show.

Footage of Strike It Up on CEC-Stage has been found however.

CheeseVention Discs
While not exactly official media, CheeseVention was a series of fan events that were filmed and produced as DVDs in a limited quantity. There are 7 CV disc sets, with only the third event disc fully preserved. Some discs also don't have any footage online

Cybervision Betamax Tapes
Starting in January of 1987, the Arlington, TX (2216 S Fielder Rd) store began testing the first iteration of Cybervision using betamax tapes. This would be done for every tape of that year before Cybervision would make its way to the rest of the stores in early 1988. All the video for these tapes are lost, and assumedly not even in CEC Corporate's possession. Getting footage of Arlington during 1987 may yield new footage of these tapes.

The Cyberstar Diagnostic Tape for the Rock-afire was also found in a betamax format, meaning it is unclear how many showtapes continued to be produced in the beta format before all stores switched to SVHS. This needs to be researched as well.

Update
A new quote from David Philipson many years ago discussing the system, though he weirdly notes two stores had the old system, and were instead in Austin, TX. It is unclear if these were two extra stores, or if he meant to say Arlington, or if one was in Arlington and one in Austin. There being two stores also leads to the idea that the other store was indeed a Showbiz store as shown by the RAE betamax tape."'Cybervision was an idea that Paul Linden and [Dave Philipsen] came up with in around 1986. This was before DVDs and before we ever thought of combining video with a show. All shows has traditionally run on reel-to-reel tape decks.  Paul and I had played around a little with a couple of VCR formats, VHS HiFi and Beta HiFi.  These formats used the rotating head on a VCR to record a much higher quality audio signal.  Some professional decks were just starting to become available with the ability to record audio not only on the longitudinal tracks (standard) but also on the HiFi tracks.  This meant that they were capable of playing back four audio channels and video simultaneously.  After some wrangling, we finally convinced the boss to let us prototype a system that would run a 3-stage show with stereo audio and use the two longitudinal tracks for character data. We called it 'Cybervision'. It was installed in two locations in Austin, TX and the name later morphed to 'Cyberstar'.'"

Kooser Showtapes
While the only seen showtape made for the second Pizza Time Theatre location was a Helen Henny showtape, there's evidence supporting an unknown about of additional tapes being released between the location's opening and its eventual upgrade to Cyberamics.

At the very least there were two tapes, being the opening Helen Henny Showtape, and some sort of tape released after March of 1979, being the Helen Henny 2nd Showtape. The supporting evidence for this is the differing reels seen on the Cyberamic Control System between a newspaper article of the store in March of 1979. , and the Real People TV footage of the store, filmed at an unknown time.

While it is not confirmed which came first, most likely the Real People TV footage came after the news article. The footage would air as part of Season 3, Episode 13, on November 12, 1980. It is believed that Real People filmed Season 2 and 3 simultaneously, explaining the gap between the footage and the final air date.

Season 1 would conclude on April 18, 1979, though Season 2 might have started filming before the final air date. The Kooser Rd store would upgrade to Cyberamics in either April of May of 1980. This makes the potential filming date around this time. The unconfirmed start of production though could mean a non-zero scenario where the footage's reel came before the newspaper snapshot's.

This is only within the scope of these two tapes however. There are an unconfirmed amount of tapes produced at Kooser, meaning potentially neither of these are the original starting tape, nor the final tape.

Update

A new source has been found from April of 1979 that does not mention any new programming, but rather goes into detail about the first showtape. This confirms that the March 79 photo is indeed of the first showtape. There still is a small chance the tape chance would be from a replacement tape, but its also pretty likely new skits were developed, so this will need to be rewritten in some way with all this extra evidence.