Watch TV from the 90s and earlier

HackerNews seems like the place to ask this:

There is something magical about switching to a channel mid-stream. The old joke about how you'll watch a movie from the half-way mark with commercials on TV even though the DVD is on the shelf. I think this is why pluto.tv is so popular.

I have a ton of video files but can't find any way to recreate this for myself. Why isn't there a project like Plex but for channels?

I’ve definitely read several write ups of delightful nerds who have set up in-house 24/7 channels sourcing from their libraries of content. A “Friends” channel, 90s toons channel, etc. I wish I could find you some links.

Check out ErsatzTV and dizqueTV. I’m working on a Saturday morning cartoon channel that uses Adult Swim fillers.

Channels has this feature (“Virtual Channels”): https://getchannels.com/library/

I've got one of these projects. It's written in Python and buggy as hell (so I have kept the repo private until I have something others will enjoy).

The "schedule" is JSON, so it was easy enough to write a web page that parses today's schedule and presents it TV-Guide style: https://engineersneedart.com/UHF/

(Gaps in airtime are filled with shorts of various kinds.)

I highly recommend ExpTV for this:

https://exptv.org

It spans the vhs era, curated by hand to flip through different oddities and ephemera.

No tracking, no algorithms, just a stream of fun wierdness. It even has a TV guide type thing so you can pick when to tune in.