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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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
>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
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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