As each generation of people grows older, they often look back fondly on their formative years, when there was less responsibility and more wonder. Even though things have objectively improved, we often have a bias towards the past. That’s the case for cable TV, where even though there were ads everywhere and nothing on-demand, we can see that something from this era has been lost in the modern streaming ecosystem. [Ricardo] brought back the good parts of this golden age of cable TV with this small channel surf TV.
The project tries to preserve the good parts of this era while throwing away things that we certainly don’t miss. The ability to channel surf still exists, with a rotary encoder replacing an ancient television channel selector, but there is no longer any contact with any telecommunications company, including those of the Internet. Instead, it is a completely offline machine where the user can manage their own channels and programming with a Flask application [Ricardo]’s includes his own collection of commercials from Argentina.
The hardware itself is also fairly simple, with a Raspberry Pi doing the heavy lifting, paired with a small screen and enclosed in a retro-themed television cabinet. It’s a clever throwback to a time when we might not have known what we wanted to see, but there was always something to do. These types of builds are also gaining popularity right now, and we’ve even seen them recreate the cable company’s preview channel as well.
#Channel #surfing #nostalgia #machine