[HN Gopher] Watch TV from the 90s and earlier
___________________________________________________________________
Watch TV from the 90s and earlier
Author : thunderbong
Score : 384 points
Date : 2023-07-28 12:46 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (my90stv.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (my90stv.com)
| dtagames wrote:
| Very cool! A real time machine.
| overthemoon wrote:
| Nostalgia is so powerful. I'm fully conscious of it and yet I
| still couldn't resist losing 30 minutes to this without even
| realizing it. Spent some time channel surfing 1997, which was a
| fairly pivotal year for me.
| codetrotter wrote:
| What's your favourite memory from 1997?
| iknowSFR wrote:
| Men in Black and Tomorrow Never Dies in theaters.
| supertofu wrote:
| I remember going to see Men In Black in 1997. I had a
| meltdown because I found the aliens scary, and my Mom had
| to leave the film early. My dad took my sister and he got
| to see the whole movie, which my mom resented.
|
| I was 5.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Men In Black is PG-13, isn't it? Serves your parents
| right for taking a 5 year old to watch it!
| ta1243 wrote:
| In the UK, Men in Black was a PG when released. We had a
| "12" rating at the time, but that meant 11 year olds
| couldn't go to the cinema to see it, even with an adult
| present.
|
| Independence day which came out a year earlier (also with
| Will Smith) was a 12.
| supportengineer wrote:
| It was also my favorite year! It felt like everything was
| getting better across the board.
| wintorez wrote:
| There is something extremely addictive about flipping channels on
| TV. I think it's the magic formula behind the popularity of
| TikTok. It's not "yet another social media app", it's TV re-
| invented.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I always did think that streaming services need to revive their
| format and bypass menu choice fatigue by letting you create
| "channels" by picking from shows/genres you like and then set
| you loose to channel surf.
| zforks wrote:
| It's to my understanding that YouTube has been developing
| something in this vein; that's currently being discussed with
| creators, to get them to select videos to be involved in the
| trials.
| TillE wrote:
| I think that's basically what TikTok got right. It's
| providing that experience in short form.
|
| But similarly, Amazon has never properly captured the
| experience of simply browsing the curated shelves of a
| bookstore or library. I don't think any online service has.
| esalman wrote:
| Google TV on Chromecast does that, kind of. I have a list of
| favorite free channels that I sometimes shuffle between. The
| channels themselves come from Plex, Pluto, freeve and Google
| TV itself.
| cabaalis wrote:
| I like plutotv for this purpose. Feels pretty close.
| sublinear wrote:
| Still slower than OTA TV was, but about as slow as the last
| satellite box I ever owned so fair enough.
| cududa wrote:
| I mean why can't I shuffle the episodes of a show I've
| watched a hundred times? Why can't I make a "playlist" of
| shows to share with friends? I really thought during COVID
| they'd finally implement stuff like that but nope
| Apocryphon wrote:
| And the craziest thing is that every single new network or
| studio entrant just copies the same old format set up
| Netflix/Hulu ages ago, instead of trying to introduce any
| sort of innovation. Understandably, it's a tried and true
| standard but they could always introduce alternate modes
| for that sort of interactive viewing. Who knows, maybe they
| could drive greater engagement that way.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Yeah, and studios will start making movies with original
| IP, and we'll get music that isn't top 40s rehashes.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| You'd expect lack of innovation from studios, but then
| why are Netflix or Amazon or Apple or Google acting so
| risk-adverse? Why aren't they trying anything new with
| the medium of streaming?
| [deleted]
| goarchive wrote:
| If you manage a decent sized video library at home, there are
| some options for self hosting an IPTV service that can then
| be accessed through Plex or etc.
|
| You can set channel weighting distributions, add watermarks,
| schedules, practically anything that you'd want,
| jzb wrote:
| Whatever goal streaming services have in designing their
| interfaces, it cannot be ease of finding content.
|
| Netflix, for example, basically just pushes the same 10-20
| movies and series at you under different headings.
|
| At one time you could browse by categories like "classic TV"
| but those seem to be long gone.
| cj wrote:
| Peacock has "Channels" which I appreciate.
|
| Except the channel is usually a single TV series with the
| channel looping through all seasons/episodes.
|
| Great for creating background noise from reruns of shows
| you've already watched.
| uncletaco wrote:
| I both like and am afraid of a system where you can just
| continuously flip to the next show or tv series, browsing by
| clip until you find something interesting and choose to roll
| back to the beginning of the episode. Netflix almost does
| this but it's not seamless enough due to the menu still being
| there and the variety of shows still being curated.
| yankput wrote:
| Netflix tried something like that once... I used to have
| "watch something random" button.
|
| I think it always played me Friends episodes for some reason.
| em-bee wrote:
| ugh, no, i grew up without a TV but i had TV in my 20s. one
| thing i learned very quickly that flipping channels was a waste
| of time. instead i would study the TV guide every week and mark
| every show that i wanted to watch or if i would't be able to
| watch at the time, record, and then i never watched anything
| but what i had marked.
|
| and ever since i have the ability to watch what i want any time
| because it's always available or i can download it, i do the
| same, but now i can choose when to watch without letting the TV
| dictate my schedule.
| lcfcjs wrote:
| [dead]
| gdubs wrote:
| Omg, this is amazing. I just got completely engrossed in a John
| Stewart interview of Conan from like, '94.
|
| One thing I realized about TikTok is how much it taps into the
| channel-flipping mechanism. It's basically what I would do as a
| kid rotating the dial, giving each beat about a second or two
| before flipping to the next.
|
| The biggest difference is that today, it never comes back around
| the dial - the dial is practically infinite.
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| I laugh-cringed at the "Operation Pedophile Not" skit from SNL
| in 1994.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| i've actually noticed that tiktok is good sending me back to
| creators if there's an update to something that went viral.
|
| or there are times where i'll get a clip from one angle then an
| hour later i get another video from a different perspective
| rudyfink wrote:
| >The biggest difference is that today, it never comes back
| around the dial - the dial is practically infinite.
|
| And the TV analyzes your dial-flipping to determine what
| channel to change you to / generates a channel you are more
| likely to stay on.
| jvm___ wrote:
| Is hackernews on of the last sites where the TV doesn't
| analyze your preferences and generates a new front-page based
| on what it thinks will engage you the most?
| mnd999 wrote:
| Heh, heh, this sux change it.
| joahua wrote:
| To be fair TV ratings did this, just on a very slow inference
| cycle!
| RedditKon wrote:
| How is copyright / licensing working on this site? Would love to
| learn!
| jamilton wrote:
| It appears the videos are curated from those publicly posted on
| YouTube, so that passes the buck.
| bloaf wrote:
| Lawrence Sonntag regularly streams a 90s nostalgia program like
| this on twitch. He calls it Mediatek, and will use it as filler
| for his gaming streams when he is afk.
|
| twitch.tv/sirlarr
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Yeap, pretty much. It doesn't recreate the difficult-to-move
| "thunk" of TVs without remotes with separate VHF (2-14) and UHF
| (15-36,38-69) controls.
|
| - Married with Children
|
| - The Simpsons
|
| - Fresh Prince of Bel Air
|
| - SNL
|
| - Airwolf
|
| - Knight Rider
|
| - The A-Team
|
| It doesn't recreate standing and pointing in just right pose
| adjusting rabbit ears. They were impossible to tune them because
| touching them changes their parameters greatly. Some people put
| aluminum foil balls on the ends.
|
| Many older TVs supported NTSC UHF (OTA) channels up to 83 and
| beyond, but the maximum channel was 69 because 70-83 were
| reallocated in 1983.
|
| To hookup a Nintendo or Atari (NTSC) to an older TV, a box like
| this would be needed to switch between the console and the OTA
| antenna.[0] Some of them included an additional switch to select
| either channels 2 or 3. In the transition to coax, sometimes they
| would have or need a push on matching transformer to work with
| newer TVs. Nintendo released (included?) a coax-only auto switch.
|
| 0. https://www.vintagecomputing.com/wp-
| content/tvswitch_2_large...
| pelasaco wrote:
| TV from 90s, I was watching from 95/96-- great movies being
| announced, Saturday night live being political incorrect and
| funny and just normal people.. I miss that time.
| glonq wrote:
| To make the 80's TV more authentic, is there an option to change
| channels via a pair of vice-grips that are permanently attached
| to the stub where the missing/broken channel knob should be?
| Because that's how I experienced it.
|
| The static effect is nice for creating a low-fi vibe, but some
| kind of CRT effect (like many arcade & console emulators have)
| would be even better.
| patwolf wrote:
| My dad had a penchant for repairing things using plastic
| handles off of disposable razors. This was back when razors had
| straight plastic handles, not the ergonomic, overmolded grips
| of today. We had one in place of the missing knob on our TV.
| n1b0m wrote:
| At University we had a tv that would give static shocks every
| time you tried to change the channel.
| cguess wrote:
| sounds like some maintenance guy didn't properly ground the
| ground plug in that outlet... (or it was one of the old two
| prong outlets and you used an adapter and just did what we
| all did and leave the ground wire hanging there instead of
| screwing it properly into the outlet cover screw like we were
| supposed to)
| anjel wrote:
| For those left wanting for demographic attraction:
|
| https://my50stv.com/
|
| https://my60stv.com/
|
| https://my50stv.com/
|
| https://my70stv.com/
|
| https://my80stv.com/
|
| https://my00stv.com/
|
| https://my10stv better known as Youtube.com
|
| https://my20stv better known as TikTok.com
|
| There is no https://my40stv but there should be.
| samstave wrote:
| vaughn.live/misc
| erickhill wrote:
| Rad! Now I can rewatch MTV videos before the channel was utterly
| destroyed by low budget "reality TV" game shows.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| A good video about how that came to be:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd1gqLVHZWo
| cortesoft wrote:
| "The Real World" started in 1992
| BeefyMcGhee wrote:
| True story!
| clairity wrote:
| real world boston was the only reality tv show i watched more
| or less all the way through. it was fun while it lasted but
| once it was over, reality tv felt "done" and i didn't really
| want to watch much more of it. i still don't understand the
| lasting appeal tbh.
| erickhill wrote:
| It's cheap to produce, yet gets enough eyeballs to validate
| its existence.
|
| No more paying actors, script writers (at least, not at the
| same level), etc.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| Reality TV and game shows are two different things. MTV's first
| game show (and first non-music programming) was "Remote
| Control" begun in the late 1980s.[1]
|
| I used to watch regularly -- funny how I remembered the names
| of Colin Quinn and Kari Wuhrer, but couldn't remember the
| host's name without looking it up.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Control_(game_show)
| tomrod wrote:
| This is so cool!
|
| How does it work?
| boringg wrote:
| Alf?
| snake_plissken wrote:
| This is incredible! How does it work?
|
| Kevin Harlan's voice sounds EXACTLY the same:
|
| https://my90stv.com/#0-fAbPN9CgM
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Excellent. Simple, replicates the experience, brings back
| memories.
|
| How many people don't even know what it was like to keep flipping
| channels.
| zaps wrote:
| Welp there goes my afternoon
| cs02rm0 wrote:
| This is absolutely amazing.
|
| TV sucks these days!
| AlbertCory wrote:
| You can also get a digital TV antenna (< $100) since most of them
| are still being broadcast, somewhere. This gives you the FULL
| experience of having to know when the shows are "on." /s
|
| Of course if you live in an apartment that may not work.
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| _Any_ TV antenna will work ( "digital antenna" is just a
| marketing term).
| op00to wrote:
| You do not need to spend $100. You do not need to spend $1 if
| you have some scrap laying around. TV antennas are super easy
| to build!
|
| http://users.wfu.edu/matthews/misc/dipole.html
| https://www.w9dup.org/technet_files/folded_dipoles_vhf_uhf_y...
| kamranjon wrote:
| Will this still work now that VHF and UHF are no more?
| op00to wrote:
| I don't know about outside of the US, but "HDTV" in the US
| is on the same old vhf and uhf bands as their analog
| predecessors exempting some carve outs for cellular. The
| antenna lengths will be the same.
| ansible wrote:
| VHF has gone away in some areas, as I understand it. It
| is all gone in the Chicago metro area, now all HDTV is
| broadcast on UHF channels only. And thank goodness for
| that! For a while, CBS 2 Chicago was on VHF channel 12,
| and was limited in power. So the reception outside the
| city limits was rather poor, even for relatively close-in
| suburbs. They finally got 48.2 allocated, and that comes
| in much better, much further out. It was frustrating,
| because the other major & minor channels were already on
| UHF and came in fine.
| pessimizer wrote:
| VHF and UHF are still almost as they were. It was the
| format that changed, not the frequency.
|
| UHF only goes up to channel 52 now, though. Before 2009 it
| went up to channel 70, and before 1983 UHF went all the way
| up to 83.
| jpl56 wrote:
| Yes, but just as before, you need multiple dipoles since
| there are multiple frequencies. Digital allows multiple
| channels where we had one analog.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I'm literally still using the last antenna I had for my
| last CRT tv, and my reception is great.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Mine looks like a figure-8. And only about 3 feet high
| and 18 inches wide, more or less.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| It's a whole other world out there! But yeah, you can get
| the big sporting events, e.g. some of the Women's World Cup
| matches (the ones the US team is in).
|
| When I first connected it, I cycled through ALL the
| channels. There were about 800.
| artur_makly wrote:
| there goes my weekend...
| mk_stjames wrote:
| What is wild to me is how many of the commercials I nearly
| instantly recognized, or at least have some partial recollection
| of. Pocahontas movie promos like mad. Bac-O Bacon bits. That car
| commercial with the 'Dooby-dooby-doo' part of Sinatra's Strangers
| in the Night. That fancy sounding 1992 Acura commercial with the
| classical music.
|
| Maybe it's just weird confirmation bias but I felt like as soon
| as some of them start airing I'm like "yep... I remember seeing
| this." Whereas I don't feel that about much of the shows or
| newscasts. Maybe just shows how impressionable repetitive
| advertisements are on young minds.
| pfd1986 wrote:
| Love this. Needs a chat functionality like old Arconai used to.
| Would spend hours there :)
| GenericDev wrote:
| @jojohack This is really cool!
|
| One of my billionaire fantasies was to one day archive all of TV
| Guide and then use that to line up airing blocks for each decade
| at the start of every decade and then have it available as a
| streaming option.
|
| Either way! Thank you so much for this!
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| TV Guide is tough. You have over 100 broadcast markets, each of
| which got their own magazine essentially, but before widespread
| adoption of ISSN, so even keeping track of which is which is
| tough. And the supported markets changed over the years too, so
| even if you figure it out for say 1984, in 1985 it's all mixed
| up again.
|
| Then, most of these are missing. Archive.org's collection is
| thread-bare. For most calendar dates they only have one, and
| which market it is for is just random (though, it favors the
| big ones... California, NYC/NJ, etc).
|
| After that, each page of listings is just _bad_. It 's not as
| easily OCRed as more traditional multi-column magazines. The
| listings often don't make mention of which episode is being re-
| run, title only quite often. This affects afternoon cartoons on
| UHF quite a bit, since they'd do alot of the short film Looney
| Tunes and Woody Woodpecker. You don't get any information on
| pre-emption at all. No sports-going-in-to-overtime or
| President-Reagan-has-an-important-announcement-about-the-
| commies. Daytime soaps can probably be pieced together just
| from the date (but that isn't perfect over long stretches and
| mixups accumulate, the NY Times lost track of their issue
| number and by the time they noticed they were off by 5000).
|
| Hell, I wonder how many _different_ edited-for-tv edits of
| movies there are, for at least a few there might be more than
| one because there 's more reasons to do it than just bleeping
| out profanity.
| jslakro wrote:
| I recommend this stream, a 24/7 curated list of retro TV:
| https://www.twitch.tv/oldtimeycomputershow
| lycos wrote:
| Not related but somehow it reminded me that I had one of those
| casio pocket tvs and felt so cool that I could watch a _very_
| limited amount of TV while on the go mid-late 90s, and how I even
| managed to hook it up to our local cable with a homemade cable to
| get even more channels when at home. I'm so grateful I got to
| live through those times and been in a fortunate enough position
| to play with 90s gadgets like that.
| netsharc wrote:
| A while ago I realized, nowadays we all have pocket TVs with
| on-demand video libraries, and the biggest one is even free...
| uncletaco wrote:
| I used to hide in the closet with one of those when my parents
| would argue, much easier to drown them out with headphones than
| just a tv by itself. Granted the selection was always something
| like Andy Griffith or primetime network. While the
| circumstances surrounding why I needed that little thing are
| terrible I'm still happy I had it and its still floating around
| in a box somewhere in my current home.
| da02 wrote:
| Did they ever stop fighting? Or did they divorce?
| uncletaco wrote:
| Separation and eventual divorce.
| elzbardico wrote:
| The music, the music! How did things got so fucked since that
| time?
| cududa wrote:
| It's that you got older and your tastes stayed the same and the
| youngs developed their own taste
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| If you are on the road and only have limited mobile bandwidth
| available you can instead _read_ entire Seinfeld episodes:
|
| https://www.seinfeldscripts.com/seinfeld-scripts.html
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I guess this is how that twitch channel was trained?
| batch12 wrote:
| It'd be nice if one could take scripts and screenplays and turn
| them into classic radio dramas.
| tivert wrote:
| One inaccuracy/anachronism: this simulation has a second of
| static between channel changes. Analog TVs were _never_ like
| that. Channel changes were near instantaneous, and there was
| never any static unless you tuned to a dead channel.
|
| All those pauses and waits are an artifact of later
| computerized/digital technology.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Analog TVs were never like that. Channel changes were near
| instantaneous, and there was never any static unless you tuned
| to a dead channel.
|
| IIRC, it wasn't uncommon for UHF dials to be continuous while
| VHF had precise stops and switched directly from channel to
| channel, so in UHF, as a practical matter, you'd have static
| between tuned channels, while that was not the case in VHF.
|
| Its been a long time since I had a TV work a tuning dial, but
| that's what I recall.
| tivert wrote:
| > IIRC, it wasn't uncommon for UHF dials to be continuous
| while VHF had precise stops and switched directly from
| channel to channel, so in UHF, as a practical matter, you'd
| have static between tuned channels, while that was not the
| case in VHF.
|
| That must have been a pretty old or cheap TV. All the dial
| TVs I ever used had stops for all the channels, VHF and UHF.
| And even when I was a kid, pretty much all TVs didn't have
| dials, but some kind of digitally-controlled analog tuner.
|
| I remember tuning from channel 2 to 60 or so in maybe about a
| quarter second or less. Definitely so fast I didn't really
| register it as a delay.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That must have been a pretty old or cheap TV.
|
| Well, they weren't all old when I used them (some were; TVs
| were expensive to replace so got kept a while.) Maybe the
| ones without UHF stops were, though, its been quite a
| while.
|
| > And even when I was a kid, pretty much all TVs didn't
| have dials
|
| Likely, you were a kid more recently than I was.
| jzb wrote:
| I want to say I remember static between channels, but TBH
| it's been too many years to say for sure. My parents gave
| me a 12" black and white TV in the late 70s or very, very
| early 80s and I want to say it'd had static when switching
| channels.
|
| I know, though, that I had to adjust the antenna for some
| channels. The knob did have specific stops, but you had to
| tinker with the antenna position for some channels.
| lolidk wrote:
| That's right. Before all that you'd typically spend a few
| minutes going through all the frequencies to set the channels.
| tivert wrote:
| > That's right. Before all that you'd typically spend a few
| minutes going through all the frequencies to set the
| channels.
|
| I don't think that's quite right.
|
| IIRC that was basically a function to scan for inactive
| channels so they could be automatically skipped when flipping
| through channels sequentially. That scan was often automated.
|
| The frequencies were already set in the TV, and I don't
| recall any capability on any set to change them (except to
| flip between the "over-the-air" channel/frequency mappings
| and the "cable" mappings).
| lolidk wrote:
| Whenever you got yourself a new TV, you had to set the
| channels once. Afterwards it would just remember what you
| already had.
| jzb wrote:
| Perhaps this will help, there's a video demonstrating a UHF
| device where they switch channels to show the device output:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahtRI-_A1j8
|
| It doesn't quite show static the way the website does, but it's
| also not exactly what I'd call "near instantaneous."
| tivert wrote:
| > It doesn't quite show static the way the website does, but
| it's also not exactly what I'd call "near instantaneous."
|
| I think that effect might be exaggerated because he's tuning
| across several channels in one turn (e.g.
| https://youtu.be/ahtRI-_A1j8?t=88) and those channels would
| be full of static. The device he's showing apparently spaces
| out its transmissions 4 channels apart.
|
| What I meant by "near instantaneous" was that the delays were
| short enough that I don't recall registering them as "I'm
| waiting for this," and when started I using digital TVs I
| registered the channel-switch speed as a noticeable and
| annoying regression.
|
| I guess my point is the simulation has a digitally-slow pause
| with static, which seems like anachronism with a coat of
| retro-colored paint. I may have overstated things, because I
| mainly watched TV after the dial era (and the 90s were
| definitely after the dial era).
| nodesocket wrote:
| Loved seeing a commercial from Nestle drumstick with an
| attractive blonde slowly eating the ice cream bar in a very
| sexually charged manner. Won't see that in todays media. That's
| the generation I grew up in.
| hydrok9 wrote:
| are you crazy there's tons of sexual ads still on TV
| humanistbot wrote:
| > Won't see that in todays media. That's the generation I grew
| up in.
|
| Oh come off it. Sex still sells. Sexualized ads are still
| around, and they're always controversial. They were
| controversial in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and they're
| controversial today. If there was one thing Tipper Gore and
| Laura Bush agreed on during the 1990s, it was that media was
| too sexual and violent.
| blipvert wrote:
| And people wonder how the USA ended up with a president that
| sexually assaults women, _boasts_ about sexually assaulting
| women, and pays hush money to porn actresses!
|
| Good times ...
| nodesocket wrote:
| As opposed to now promoting transgender and the idea of no
| sexes to children. Yup, I'll take the 90's.
| blipvert wrote:
| Bring back the conversation therapies! Yay.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| Which US president sexually assaulted women and boasted about
| it?
| olgeni wrote:
| People also wonder what happened with Epstein, for that
| matter :D
| blipvert wrote:
| Well, quite. Turn people into commodities via advertising,
| don't be surprised that there's a trade :-(
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Well then, think of what generation we are creating today
| with this permanent 1984 atmosphere.
| coin wrote:
| Why the static between changing channels. Analog TVs would change
| channels instantly.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| That depends on the type of TV! The old kind had a manual
| rotary switch, and you had to move through all intermediate
| channels regardless of whether a station was broadcasting
| there, so you could see static when switching.
|
| For example, in my area, the main stations were at 4, 5, and 8.
| Switching from 5 to 4, I'd see no static because they're
| adjacent. Switching from 5 to 8, I'd see static while the knob
| was at 6 and 7.
|
| The 60s, 70s, and 80s TV sets on the site are the style I'm
| talking about. The 90s and 2000s TVs aren't.
|
| The best way to do it would be to use different transitions
| depending on the style of TV depicted. But the way they did it
| is not wrong for all analog TVs.
| xtracto wrote:
| Ha! In the 80s I was the remote control. We had one of those
| TVs with rotary channel switch. And 7 year me had the
| important task of changing the channel whenever needed, and
| adjusting the antenna as well.
| jzb wrote:
| I was the family remote control for years. This often led
| to arguments because I'd stop on what I wanted to watch
| instead of what my parents wanted to watch. "I said turn to
| channel 5!" "But I want to watch 'The Hulk!'"
|
| My teen complains about special effects in MCU shows
| sometimes. I'm like "I had to watch a bodybuilder painted
| green for superhero shows, and like it!" (RIP Bill
| Bixby...)
| WalterBright wrote:
| The idea was to designate some hapless low status family
| member to hold the antenna at just the right angle to pick
| up the station.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| In my experience, it was fairly common for there to be (as an
| example) a channel 3 and a channel 5 but no 4, so if you were
| flipping through the channels on certain TV's you'd see static.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes, in broadcast (over the air) TV, only every other channel
| was allocated in a given area. That's why most devices that
| connected to a TV (computers, VCRs, etc.) could use either
| channel 3 or channel 4 because one of the two would be
| unused.
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| There were some exceptions, though, as the VHF TV channels
| aren't all contiguous. In North America, there's a gap
| between channels 4 and 5; and channels 6 and 7 are
| separated by the bands for several radio services (FM,
| aviation, amateur, and marine).
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/VHF_Usa
| g...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Hm, didn't know that. But I still remember the channels
| we had when I was a kid:
|
| 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 13, and UHF 30.
|
| I also remember that depending on the radio, you could
| sometimes pick up the audio for I think VHF channel 6 at
| the low end of the FM dial.
| jzb wrote:
| ISTR we had 2,4,5,9,11, and 30 (UHF). Channels 2-5 were
| ABC, CBS, and NBC. Channel 9 was PBS, and 11 and 30 were
| local stations that weren't affiliated with any of the
| major networks.
| ansible wrote:
| Yep, that was a thing with NTSC-M analog channel 6, which
| had the audio at 87.75MHz, just below the nominal bottom
| of the FM range at 88.1MHz. I used to listen to the 10
| o'clock news that way.
| bombela wrote:
| Except here, there is static before the content appears on
| the channel. Which is not the same as stumbling upon an empty
| channel.
|
| Very old TV's did not have memorized channels, and so you had
| to tune to find the next channel, which would give you a
| progression to static and back.
|
| Then TV had a memory for the channel frequency. It would
| switch instantaneously the video. So fast that sometimes you
| could see the first frame in black and white. Then color info
| would come (color TV is atop of black and white and spread
| over frames if I recall). Then mono sound would come in. Then
| stereo (like color, the stereo signal is an augmentation).
| Still all of that faster than any modern technology.
|
| Then came digital TVs (still receiving analog TV signal)
| which could have a second or two of digital lag during
| channel change, but it wouldn't display static, simply a
| blank (dark) screen.
| anthk wrote:
| By the 90s everyone in the Northerhn hemisphere got a
| decent TV with instant tuning. Once you tuned the channel
| and set it up to a button on the remote or the TV front
| panel, things went as fast as Linux switching TTY's todays.
| No joke.
| jzb wrote:
| Yes, I remember well when in 1990 they went door to door
| handing out brand new TVs...
|
| Ahem. In the 80s I remember struggling with a set my
| grandparents must have bought in the late 60s to try to
| watch TV. It was like holding a seance for sitcoms. I
| expect plenty of people were still watching TV in the 90s
| on sets sold in the 70s and 80s. Maybe not the majority,
| but I wouldn't assume "everyone" had the current
| goodness.
| jwells89 wrote:
| It was also a common experience for those of us who didn't
| have cable or satellite, with the only channels available
| being whatever came in over the air.
|
| Even in more densely populated areas there were blank
| channels you'd flip through, and where I grew up there were
| only two channels that came in most of the time with another
| 1-2 that'd briefly become available at certain times of day
| or during specific weather where atmospheric conditions
| boosted the signal strength of those stations.
| bombela wrote:
| Here is my guess. The author is most likely younger than you
| and I. And has never experienced the instant response of
| analog.
| jojohack wrote:
| Creator here. I add the static to mask the video buffering (
| since each channel change triggers a video load ) I'm
| flattered though that you think of me as young. I very much
| was a child of the '80's :D
| capableweb wrote:
| You could add a "high bandwidth & low latency" mode, where
| when active, you load the current video + the next one. So
| when the user goes to the next channel, it's already
| playing but muted and not visible, and you start playing
| the next-next channel hidden again :)
| krapp wrote:
| It's so weird watching the era you grew up in fade into
| oblivion then return as an aesthetic.
| tgv wrote:
| Do you think the TVs before that were digital or hydraulic?
| Or what does the world "analog" mean in this context?
| krapp wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_transmission
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_television
| britzkopf wrote:
| Re-waste the time you wasted in your teens then re-regret what
| you didn't become because you failed to ignore distractions!!!
| jzb wrote:
| I regret nothing.
|
| OK, that's not true. I regret plenty of things. But I don't
| regret time I wasted in my teens.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| I'm watching news coverage of the 1968 presidential primary.
| Spoiler: Kennedy is leading.
| [deleted]
| twiddling wrote:
| The Daley fix is in!
| tenderfault wrote:
| I like how the volume is lower on some channels
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| My god. First AGI, then aliens, then room-tempreature
| superconductors- and now time travel???
| da02 wrote:
| What's AGI?
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Artificial General Intelligence. Like what LLMs are moving
| towards.
| belthasar wrote:
| I'd also recommend Toonami Aftermath. It has a bunch of shows
| from the mid 90s to the mid 00s. The Saturday morning line up is
| really great.
|
| https://www.toonamiaftermath.com/schedule
|
| You can also get it running in Plex (requires Plex pass) with
| these two projects:
|
| https://github.com/chris102994/docker-toonamiaftermath
|
| https://github.com/xteve-project/xTeVe
| nonethewiser wrote:
| This looks amazing but i dont see how to watch it. Perhaps
| because in on mobile? I see a schedule with what's currently
| airing but no video.
| belthasar wrote:
| I linked directly to the schedule. Go to the home page to see
| the video.
|
| https://www.toonamiaftermath.com
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I am truly helpless. Thank you
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Use the homepage https://www.toonamiaftermath.com/
| dom96 wrote:
| How is Toonami Aftermath able to air this? Do they have an
| agreement with Cartoon Network? How did they manage this?
| Anyone have any insights?
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| looks great, wish it had some Code Lyoko
| debugnik wrote:
| I know this isn't in the same spirit as the project above,
| but at least in Spain it's available on Netflix.
|
| I didn't remember it having so much filler though.
| ljf wrote:
| For a long time, a friend and I wanted to start a series of TV
| channels that showed the full days TV from a year ago, 10 years
| go, 20 etc - adverts and all - for me it is the adverts and
| news/topical bits that would be most interesting.
| jll29 wrote:
| Those 80s hairstyles and what they wore!
|
| Thanks for giving us half an hour of time travel...
| Method-X wrote:
| Go to the 2000's, select 2001 and uncheck everything but "news".
| capableweb wrote:
| Did that, but didn't find any particularly interesting. What am
| I supposed to see exactly?
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| 9/11 I presume.
| jedberg wrote:
| Already lived it, don't really need to do it again.
|
| But I did it anyway and it's interesting to see the complete
| shift in tone from pre-9/11 to post-9/11 coverage. Everyone was
| so positive and excited pre-9/11 despite the fact that we were
| already plummeting into a recession.
|
| I'd forgotten about that.
| [deleted]
| wdfx wrote:
| Perfect for that 1995 MTV vibe
| wdfx wrote:
| how come each channel only has one video? I would have though
| this should play out like regular broadcast TV and move on to
| the next item?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| It lets you enumerate and deep-link their collection instead
| of waiting around on one channel for an hour for something
| you recognize/enjoy.
| chubot wrote:
| I'm impressed by the content! It does feel very 90's!
| nativespecies wrote:
| it IS from the 90s....
| partiallypro wrote:
| I love tuning to formidable years of mine and seeing what was on.
| I wish this were even broader. There was something magical about
| the pre-streaming, pre-everything-is-on-cable era. You were on a
| schedule and there were communal events like finales etc. You
| just don't get much of that anymore.
| aka878 wrote:
| Stuck at 99% in iOS Safari.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I'm surprised there aren't more full tapings of 90's television
| available, as in entire blocks of broadcasting with all the
| commercials intact. That was how most recording would have
| happened, and with the start of TV Land the networks should have
| been able to predict there'd be a market for it in 30 years.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| Commercials have their own rights (and they often feature
| third-party music which, in turn, has its own rights). So, even
| if you have the rights to rebroadcast the actual program, you
| couldn't show the original commercials without massive legal
| hurdles.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| While I could see an issue with music rights, the commercial
| rights seem doable. I can't imagine them having a massive
| objection to "we'll show your commercial again for free."
|
| Trying to set it up now seems nearly impossible, but if they
| planned for it then it may have been possible.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Many older commercials, even some from as recenlty as the
| 90s, would be considered offensive (or worse) by today's
| standards.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| That's because the 90s were "peak freedom". I think
| partly because people were more "live and let live" and
| partly because social media did not exist yet, which is
| IMHO one of the causes of the current atmosphere of
| permanent outrage.
| krapp wrote:
| It was "peak freedom" in the sense of "freedom from
| consequence." The people who were targeted by the casual
| bigotry and homophobia of the time certainly weren't more
| "live and let live," they simply didn't have an outlet
| like social media to express their discontent at a scale
| that society could notice.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Here we go... QED.
| [deleted]
| WalterBright wrote:
| I suspect people enjoy being offended.
| rav3ndust wrote:
| true. there are collections of videos on youtube called
| "Commercials from $DECADE That Would Be Offensive Today"
| that are an amusing watch.
| guestbest wrote:
| Storage was a problem back then.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Not really. Hoarders were already mass recording TV from
| home, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Stokes
|
| Recording ~5 hours of television a night would have been a
| trivial cost for a network like NBC. Particularly compared to
| the licensing fees those hours would have had.
| standardUser wrote:
| Really. Tape media is bulky, expensive, prone to
| deterioration and the content back then _started off_ low
| quality, so that deterioration takes a meaningful toll.
| Sure, a major corporation could afford to archive and
| maintain all of that material, but what 's in it for them?
| A few thousand hours of repeating commercials and station
| promos?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Those networks were already well aware how lucrative
| nostalgia was, it seems like someone could see it as a
| worthwhile investment.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Presumably it's not just the cost of storage media, but
| storage _of_ the media too. Climate-controlled warehouses
| leased in perpetuity, archivists, security, and so on. To
| be clear, I don 't think this is why so much of TV and
| movies (not to mention radio) is lost, I think that's just
| lack of foresight or different priorities. My point is, I
| don't think just buying a few thousand off-the-shelf VHS
| blanks would have solved the problem.
| tivert wrote:
| I'm working to digitize some old VHS tapes. It's not as
| easy as it sounds.
|
| You've quite a few barriers to getting that stuff online.
|
| 1. Sure, someone taped 6 hours onto a junk tape of TV from
| some channel to catch one show. _But then they likely taped
| over that_ , again and again.
|
| 2. Tapes are bulky. VHS in general and junk tapes in
| particular would have been viewed by _most_ people as low
| value junk that was tempting to disposed of. That 's
| especially true during the decade or two before nostalgia
| and retro-cool starts making old junk more desirable.
|
| 3. Tapes degrade. Even if someone kept them, they might not
| be readable and/or gum up the VCR you're trying to use to
| read them.
|
| 4. VHS digitization equipment _is also_ old. Apparently
| newer capture cards aren 't very good compared to older
| ones, and there are specialized devices to fix signal
| errors (TBCs), allowing capture cards to actually work,
| that are becoming hard to find and expensive.
|
| 5. It takes _a lot of time_. VCRs play tapes at 1x speed.
| So if you want to digitize a 6 hour tape, it 's going to
| take _at least_ 6 hours.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| Legend
| throwanem wrote:
| Which 5 hours? The programming transmitted by the network
| with few to no commercials, or the programming broadcast by
| hundreds of NBC affiliates, each with its own set of
| commercials paid for by local advertisers?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The storage costs wouldn't be a huge deal to either
| group.
|
| In general, the affiliate nature would add a wrinkle to
| the whole thing, but not an insurmountable one. If
| nothing else, they could have used the broadcast from the
| affiliates they owned.
| guestbest wrote:
| Where's the profit motive?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Viewers? As my hypothetical has them planning this in the
| 90's, they would have been aiming for cable licensing
| fees. TV Land was fairly successful, by 1999 is was
| outperforming MTV.
| guestbest wrote:
| That was more of a problem with MTV than the success of
| nostalgia.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| TV Land's ratings were roughly equivalent to ESPN's, and
| it's success led to numerous imitators. Definitely a
| success.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I have a couple home VHS tapes like that. They're mildly
| interesting.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| It would be nice if there was a way to see what is playing
| (titles)
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