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My 90's TV

my90stv.com

324 pointsanatoly67 comments

I got a kick out of one channel where the guy said in 1991 "The rise of political correctness on college campuses".

Oh my! The more things change the more they stay the same.

I laughed at the recent South Park episode where some old guys are talking about the new wave of political correctness: "Yup... the last time this happened it lasted about 6 years"

In this case, new applications of the same law (Title IX) sit at the center of the debates in both '91 and today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX#Further_legislation_a...

The room for broad interpretation and the administrative issues with this particular law have never been resolved, so we've been seeing the same complaints emerge over different applications over very many years.

"The more things stay the same" doesn't have quite the same ring to it, though :)

Prescription medicine being too expensive and Middle East strife news from '91 as well.

You wouldn't have seen that in 2002, when islamophobia was at its peak.

I need scrambled HBO late night to feel it's real.

I used to be able to slam the top of the cable box sometimes to unscramble the feed. Talking about a proper cable box with a dial. 1-60. This might be why punching equipment is now my first line of recourse when dealing with technical issues.

Anyway, a box I can thunder slam would be a nice addition. If not, that's cool.

Ah, good ol' percussive maintenance.

I used to have a 90s TV with a bad color chip. To prevent my game of Sonic the Hedgehog from going completely puke brown in hue I had to whack the side of the TV. (Sonic wasn't weird then... another nostalgic memory.)

Of course, much like cartridge blowjobs, hitting the TV may have been based more on superstition than reality.

We had an old cabinet TV that required a good smack in just the right spot on the left side to prevent most of the picture being green. As I recall the green-ness varied in saturation from the left to the right for some reason.

Over time the required smack became more and more forceful, and the smack target became smaller. Fortunately it kept working until the time came for a new TV though. Afterward I kind of missed that. (Sort of like I now miss the great triumph of getting my parents' old lawn mower to start.)

also, channels used to change instantly. Digital TV introduced the channel up and down pause ;)

There is one obvious mistake. The 90's didn't officially begin until September 24, 1991 when Nirvana dropped Nevermind. Anything before that is still 80's.

I'd argue that the new era was ushered in by the controversy-engulfed March 1989 release of Madonna's "Like A Prayer."

For me the 90s began November 1989 watching the Berlin wall fall on TV.

I first heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on WUSB 90.1 FM: "The First Station of the 90s". Hacking connection: Eric Corley hosted "Brain Damage" on the same station.

Check it out: http://www.2600.com/braindamage/1991/0991.html

In the UK the 90's started when The Stone Roses and The Happy Mondays appeared together on Top Of The Pops. November 1989.

YouTube Time Machine has been doing this for awhile, and they do a _great_ job at it:

http://yttm.tv

Also http://neave.tv/

Words can't even describe...

I...uh...hrmm...wait...what?

I have to agree. It reminds me of the strange little shorts MTV used to have between commercials and shows.

http://vj.tv/wallflower/

VJTV Wallflower also used to a good one to put on in the background on unused monitors in hip restaruants/lounges/offices/cafes. It makes a seamless playback experience and smooths the transition between videos.

Seems to be down now, but they use a Vimeo playlist for their videos here:

http://vimeo.com/groups/wallflower

There is also AWSMTV http://awsmtv.com/

24/7 non-stop music television

There used to be this great video online, 'Three hours of MTV from 1983' [1]. It began with the VJ giving away t-shirts to promote the new Police album, Synchronicity. Looks like it went down when Youtube ate Google Video.

[1] http://www.appelogen.be/2008/01/25/3-uur-mtv-uit-1983/

This is amazing. I'm watching a newscast covering the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. They have someone on there speculating about how they could evacuate people off the roof with baskets and helicopters. It's so eerie, watching this now.

Before that, there was a newscast talking about teen obesity in the US--only 15% of teens were overweight.

And the clothes...pleated khaki chinos, jean shirts, paisley ties. LOL.

Neat. Came across this ad from AT&T about connectivity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kfIFDX9kE4

Yep. Something like ~20mbit symmetric fiber service was supposed to be rolled out by the incumbent telcos nationwide back in the 1990's. Super glad to see that they kept to their promises.

they kept the tax breaks!

And lost the money in really bad foreign investments!

Nice.

BTW, if the creator is listening, if you add "pointer-events: none;" to all the elements above the YouTube player we'll be able to close the ads.

Really captured the experience of 90s TV. No fast forward. Instead, you have to change the channel every 10-30 seconds until you found something that held your attention. There was an anxious boredom that permeated the 90s.

The Computer Chronicles from 1984

http://www.my80stv.com/#cmhtRHw_Bv0

For some reason I always knew something like this was coming. All that content form the 90's must be stored somewhere out there and one of us would recreate the channels in a way that we could relive it.

I really wish this gets to something real and that I might be able to show my kids in the future the cartoons that I grew up on.

Great work on this project!

You'd probably enjoy Nick Reboot or Toonami Aftermath, which are both community-generated channels that show that old content.

T.A. has a regular schedule, and have even managed to dig up old commercials and promos for the channel. It's pretty magical.

I'd love something like this but for the internet. Wayback Machine is cool, but pretty slow, and modern browsers tend to render things a bit differently.

Someone should be able to compile a 1990s web browser with Emscripten, right?

It's not public yet, but yes: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4546

It was a bizarre era. Almost reminiscent of Rick and Morty's Inter-Dimensional TV bits.

Haha, yeah I got glimpses of Man vs Car!

This is quite a blast from the past, Green PCs: http://www.my90stv.com/#7Hm7gi5pGeM

Apple's representative talking about packaging was particularly interesting.

"Don't copy that floppy!"

Ran across a young Conan O'Brien appearing on young Jon Stewart's MTV talk show.

Wow. Check out my80stv.com Specials. It has KCSM's Computer Chronicles. Lots of old school tech is demonstrated, current events are discussed, people wrongly predict the future... It's amazing.

Oh wow, I caught news report on Y2K bug: http://www.my90stv.com/#1xWNm_w8uVg

Check out this special on 'desktop presentation graphics' from 1989 (on sister site My 80's TV): http://www.my80stv.com/#ysJZn3wqsAw

There's a demo of MacroMind (now Macromedia/Adobe) Director in there that's pretty 80s.

brilliant! one small criticism - 60, maybe 99 channels MAX!

yes I am sure some folks had more, but double digits were the standard. and yes I'm a 90's teenager, 80s child.

All that's missing is Butthead commenting on all this.

Everything loads for me except the (I assume) videos and I get a special message:

"WARNING: This site only works on desktop browsers currently :|"

Does this use Flash or something?

This was on Product Hunt like a year ago! :D

My contribution: http://betamaxmas.com

Wow, well done. That really took me back.

This is great, though I'd love to see something localized for Australia (and other countries)

Psh, it's already localized...

..to southern ohio. I miss my missouri commercials.

Very cute project. It makes me wish that there were really a way to watch some of this stuff.

Youtube does have a ton of the cartoons from the 90s.

Yes, but it's very hit and miss, they tend to leave a lot to be desired re quality, a lot of them are mirror-imaged to get around automatic copyright detection, or the sound is bad, or...and so on.

Don't forget that at the time, HDTV was almost non-existent, and VHS tape at ~240p resolution was the most common recording medium.

Yeah, understood, but what I mean is that I don't want to watch 17 year old bootleg tapes that random people have uploaded to YouTube, I want Viacom or somebody to actually put this content online in whatever is the best quality they have.

Have you seen NReboot before?

http://nreboot.com/r/m

The accuracy here is frightening!

Is there a way to tell exactly what you are watching at any given time?

The title's down towards the bottom of the interface

Holy Cow!

Life Stinks Trailer! I thought I was the only who remembered that movie!

Gets to loading 99% and stops there for me.

You lucky, lucky person. 74% for me.

that tube glow thing is awesome!

This is awesome. Great work.

How does this even work?

Impressive.

Flipped through channels, saw a Wallflowers music video, stopped.

Same thing happened 18 years ago. Nice to relive that.

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