TV Time Machine: A Raspberry Pi That Plays Random 90s TV | Hacker News Reader

TV Time Machine: A Raspberry Pi That Plays Random 90s TV

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84 pointscapitain44 comments

    Growing up in the 90s, television was a different experience.
    You turned on the TV, and whatever was playing at that moment
    would become your entertainment.

    Strangely enough, I miss that feeling of having something
    selected for me, something I cannot influence.

I grew up a few decades before and I lack the author's nostalgia. I think some of that is because my exposure to OTA TV was much longer. Some was because I missed TV's first Golden Age and TV trended toward awful afterward - with some exceptions (Taxi & 1980s NBC Thru night are 2). I never had cable so I can't factor that in.

Between having control over what I watch and some of the absolutely stellar content that's come out in the last generation, I've no nostalgia for OTA TV of yore. I really like what I have.

Yeah, I grew up on a rural OTA antenna with one clear channel and two dodgy ones.

The live experience was better for zoning out. That’s about it. You had no choice.

Today I can spend 20 minutes just browsing and never settle on anything. I’m never able to just zone out.

Certainly as an adult I was never really a channel surfer I had a lot of programs I wanted to watch and if I cared enough I would set the VCR once those were available.

Also, people knew what was on TV before they turned it on.

People bought TV Guide magazine, which was pages and pages of listings, or looked at the TV page in the newspaper.

You also generally had the airtimes for your favorite shows memorized (I bet a lot of people who were alive in the '90s could still tell you when, e.g., Seinfeld, ER, The Simpsons, and The X-Files were on and on what channel number).

Well, I was born in black and white. As a lad in the UK in the '70s, we had three channels on the goggle box - BBC1 and 2 and ITV, which was regional. If you lived in the right place you could get two ITV regions equally badly. You tuned the TV with a rotary knob.

Viewing figures for some programmes were staggering due to the obvious reason - little choice. For example I seem to recall that some episodes of say Neighbours (Australian soap), had more viewers in the UK than the entire population of Australia! The marriage of Charlene (Kylie M) and that blonde bloke (Jason D) was one.

These sorts of things are fun projects, and I appreciate the effort that goes into them. But running my own media server with 4K mkv files I can browse and play on an OLED TV is light years ahead of what I had in the 90s, and I love it.

I have long thought Netflix should offer such a service. Have a sitcom channel that plays constantly from a slowly evolving list. Even better if I could just pick say Seinfeld and get random episodes from an episodic show. I do not want to have to expend energy picking a season+episode, just trying to decompress.

Netflix wants you to watch their own shows, not TV from the 90s that they have to pay licensing fees for.

Ah of course. Naturally there is an economic incentive to not deliver the product I want.

They could still have a random/channel-surf button that plays their own shows in a similar way.

Plenty of other services do this. Plex has a whole cable-style directory of “live” shows

Isn't this just Pluto TV? Like, https://pluto.tv/us/live-tv/633354b63df9700007f6a1b7 is the sitcom channel, https://pluto.tv/us/live-tv/66ba495ffe11e5000881f049/details is the channel of just Cheers and Frasier, etc. Just playing non-stop through one episode after another on a schedule as quasi-"live" TV.

That is exactly what I imagined! However, I would prefer a service I already use, free of commercials.

Definitely going to consider using this.

WatchSeinfeld dot net, works on my TV browser.

I think they had this feature at some point. It randomly selected something to watch, with a skip to next button.

On the radio side, XM radio has a lot of channels like this. A 70s channel, 80s, 90s, 2000s, 10s, etc.

A lot of black-market IPTV services (the kind with "30 000" channels") will have dedicated channels. A Simpsons channel, etc. where you just get whatever episode it's currently playing.

youtubeTV in my area has a Portlandia channel, non-stop on a loop. Always thought it was strange that was the only marathon channel.

It is nice not to have to pick an episode.

You can self-host ErsatzTV and have the Plex/Jellyfin Live TV section show the channels you've programmed yourself. Highly recommend.

In 2005 I came across of video stream (mp4? viewable in VLC) of early 20th c. cartoons. There were dozens and dozens of them and nothing else. I never worked out who was behind it, just that it's IP was in western Europe. It was up for at least a year.

My kids were often with me during adult hours (work, etc) and I'd put it on for them. But I was also half-captivated by the idea of anonymously delivered content.

It would be fantastic to find a modern equivalent except delivering an endless slate of novel, off-kilter and largely inexplicable content.

Sometimes TikTok live streams are like that. Not always, but at certain times of day, there's a huge variety. For me, I interact with it like an old television. Just flipping channels. Not knowing what I'll get and not seeking out specific live streams. At 3 AM my time, I stumble across weirdness and it feels like my childhood watching random stuff on cable.

Take a look at archive.org’s video section.

They're a great resource.

I once saw this awful movie in mid-1970s. I couldn't remember the name, just bits of the plot.

archive.org had it: https://archive.org/details/EndoftheWorld

It's unbelievable to me how they get away with being the largest central host of pirated content on the planet.

Personally, I hope IA's projects help plant a vital but poorly distributed notion - that laws aren't ethics.

Sometimes laws aren't even laws but thru bad judgment and manipulation, they can be enforced as if they were. Copyright's endless complexities land it here a lot. Perhaps we should expect that when we let an industry buy it's way into - tinking with and creating law.

For an instant time machine feeling:

https://myretrotvs.com/

from: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44942602

I'd love to have a database of once-annoying but now-nostalgic TV commercials to intersperse between the shows, and insert into commercial breaks. (Those dramatic pauses in Star Trek TOS just aren't the same without a Crazy Eddie interruption.)

HEAD ON: Apply Directly to the Forehead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_SwD7RveNE

W.E.T. P.E.T.S.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMbsZU83ajc

Fine Corinthian Leather:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0diMFShiUU

Bic Banana Ink Crayon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv5O2zwyQGo

Flea Market Montgomery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ3oHpup-pk

Crazy Eddie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml6S2yiuSWE

Probably looking for https://www.retrojunk.com/ then, or https://www.clipland.com/

I showed an old Dr Pepper commercial (one of the singing/dancing crowd ones), to a kid and she loved it compared to those of today.

https://youtu.be/TEy_1dvBFYE

I've setup something like this recently and I think it's great - I really like the idea of just dropping into the middle of a movie because honestly who has the time to watch a 3 hour movie? that's one thing I really miss about TV

kinda tempted to get a CRT just for it to make it even better

I find it quite baffling you'd want to drop In halfway through a 3 hour movie, you'd miss out on so much!

And plenty of people have time to relax and watch a 3 hour movie. They wouldn't make them otherwise.

The again I also find the idea of turning on a show or film just as background filler/noise to be quite weird as well but many people seem to do it so I guess I'm the weird one for either paying complete attention to a film otherwise I find it distracting

shrug

>I find it quite baffling you'd want to drop In halfway through a 3 hour movie, you'd miss out on so much!

if it's good I'll rewatch it, if it's something I've already seen then I'm not missing anything at all. There's so many movies I've turned off when the beginning is boring, it's a decent way to watch new movies and it's how movies on TV used to work.

I'm trying to watch Robert Altman's filmography slowly, and there's so many slow 3 hour movies that watching them in small pieces until they click and actually make me interested in the entire thing helps. if it's all action or something maybe it seems pointless, but some films are a very slow burn, and this helps.

also it's not just movies, but TV too. I would use the shuffle button on comedy shows I've seen a million times before, now tv style drop in works just as well as that when I just want a laugh but don't really care what episode of something I'm watching. now I don't even have to pick a series, I can just pick a channel labelled comedy.

did you grow up with cable tv? maybe it's generational or regional thing

If I'm not mistaken, raspberry pi has composite video support. At least some generations (2, 3 and 4?) seem to include it in the headphone jack.

Edit: even the 5 seems to include composite video, but it requires a little bit of soldering.

Yep you’re right. The author does not need any conversion, only the correct adapter to drive a TV from the era.

IIRC, some while ago, there was a post from somebody that recreated multiple 90s-like TV channels. Like, one “channel” would bring sitcoms, another would show children shows, etc. And it was dependent on the time of day, i.e. you could “miss” an episode if you didn’t “tune in” at the right time. One or two episodes per show per day. Just like in the old days.

Not sure whether he even implemented that Weather Channel simulator or I’m mixing things up in my head. But I remember that it was pretty impressive.

>Growing up in the 90s, television was a different experience. > >You turned on the TV, and whatever was playing at that moment would become your entertainment. > >Nowadays you yourself are in control, you choose what you want to see, whenever you want.

You had some control back then, too -- you could change the channel. I don't know anywhere that had a single OTA channel in the 1990s.

(And "Stargate SG-1" was on cable.)

I had zero when I moved into my current house in the mid 90s until I was able to get cable maybe a couple years later. (And now I have zero live channels again since I cut the cord.)

Yup, and it was only on in the 90s for a few years. More of a 2000s show than 90s IMO.

> And "Stargate SG-1" was on cable.

Not in 'Rest of World'. It was on Channel 4 in the UK, over-the-air.

Your website says that it's best viewed with Netscape 3 or Mozilla, but I can't connect with Netscape 4.05 or Mozilla 1.7.12; please consider offering HTTP.

Reminds me of old school 2000’s internet tv.

blippo+ comes out Sep 23

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3323850/Blippo/

> Nowadays you yourself are in control

Think twice

I have been waiting for this for a long time. Very happy to see this thank you to the dev / devs! hands-emoji

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