Revel in the past with a range of virtual TV channels

The only downside of living in an age where endless amounts of really good TV shows and movies are constantly available at your fingertips is that not paying attention to what you’re watching has gotten that much harder. and just lie around on the couch for hours and stare blankly into the distance.

Lucky designers Joey Cato used the internet to remake those happier days of brainmelting on TV, with a TV emulating website called My retro televisions.

The page features the image of one of several large clunky old TVs alongside a row of switches that allow viewers to choose whether or not to watch certain genres (talk shows, cartoons, news, etc.) or commercials. To really capture the nostalgic aspect of the viewing experience, Cato has divided My Retro TVs into five decades, allowing users to choose to focus on shows from the 1960s, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, ‘00s, or specific years within each period. (After the 2000s, you might as well mindlessly browse YouTube anyway.)

Each decade has its own era-appropriate TV design, with on-screen controls that change channels, adjust volume, or control the degree to which “vintage noise” and other effects are superimposed on the stream.

The TV channels work by grabbing videos from YouTube and filtering them into the appropriate channel. As Cato puts it, the project aims to “honor pop culture memories of decades past” and “simulate the vintage experience of channel surfing on a television from a specific era.”

Based on experience browsing channels on the ‘’90s TV and believing that watching an Oasis music video is better than commercials, it seems like Cato has achieved his simulation goal, for better or for worse.

[via Boing Boing]

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