Watch TV from the 90s and earlier

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.

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.

I like plutotv for this purpose. Feels pretty close.

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.

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,

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.

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

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.

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.

Still slower than OTA TV was, but about as slow as the last satellite box I ever owned so fair enough.

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.

Yeah, and studios will start making movies with original IP, and we'll get music that isn't top 40s rehashes.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

The only place I do this anymore in hotel rooms, although I'm usually foiled by how horribly slow this experience has become. I've stayed in hotels where it's up to 5 seconds between channels. This was a real sacrifice in the move to Digital Cable (although I recognize hotels have their own reasons for being extra extra slow).

That's enough time to show you an ad between channels!

How much time did you spend on this per week?

i don't know really how much it was back then, but not to much. there wasn't more than one or two shows in a day that i was interested in, often it was less, so maybe 5-10 hours per week?

i can tell you that now i spend an average of 1 to 1.5 hours per day watching movies, series or youtube. there are to many other interesting things to do that i also want to spend time on (like discussing on HN :-)

What options are these? I wouldn't ask but I've been googling for a few weeks to no avail. I keep finding options to set up IPTV from a broadcast source but not from files.

Thank goodness whoever built these dog-slow hotel systems is too incompetent to pull that off! Although I wouldn’t put it past them to have 5 seconds of black screen, ad, 5 seconds of black screen, next channel.

Yeah it’s definitely very clear that they are outright hostile to user-determination. Seems like they have proven in testing that they can best maximize watch hours (or perhaps renewable) ONLY when the algorithm heavily influences what you watch (and by maximizing the number of exclusive series you start?), so it seems like they hide anything you’re already watching and push all their series at once.

> There is something extremely addictive about flipping channels on TV.

The worst is when the remote dies on you because somebody keeps forgetting to replace the batteries. So you have to sit a foot from the tv screen to manually flip the channels. Then you get yelled at by your parents because it's bad for your eyes. And now everybody, including your parents, is frying their eyes looking at a monitor or smartphone screen up close.

Dizquetv is the one and only that I’ve tried so far to be honest, but it just worked exactly how I was hoping right from the start.

https://github.com/vexorian/dizquetv

Linus talked about this recently on a LTT video. it sounds like they get to make a list of previous videos that air onto a 24-hour TV-like live broadcast. Not many details it sounded like and I'm not sure if you set the order or if YouTube decides. You can see the LTT one on the Live tab if you go to their page.

This was extremely common especially once cable boxes started to get more advanced guides and built in dvr. The TV guide just became a catalog of what you wanted to watch. All watching you'd do completely inside recordings. It was nice when they added their own episode catalog (on-demand I believe it was called, before we started calling it streaming) and would skip the dvr recording of an episode and go straight to their on-demand one. Or when you started watching something mis-show and the cable box would offer to restart from beginning from their on-demand offering.

Worth noting that, in some countries, TV guides published numeric codes for each programme. These codes could be punched directly into a video recorder to set up a recording (instead of having to manually select the channel, the date and the start/end times).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_recorder_scheduling_co...

There's no innovation in streaming because there's no competition in streaming. There's no competition in streaming because the business model is about hoarding IP and tying it to the service that will provide the most money. The actual streaming service itself is ancillary.

If you want to see innovation in streaming you need the sort of legislation that prevents that tying. If every show was available on every streaming platform, then they would start to compete on offering the best streaming service and you'd start to see innovation. Right now, there's just no incentive.

They tried with Quibi, didn't they? /s