Ah, the evenings watching Club Dorothée, the credits of Récré A2, the Kiki ads and the Wednesday cartoons… If these memories speak to you too, hold on tight to your virtual remote control because I am going to introduce you to an absolutely fascinating project that will awaken your television nostalgia!
Imagine that Joey Cato, a Netflix engineer passionate about the 80s and 90s, had the idea of creating a television time machine. His name? MyRetroTVs. And its concept is also simple: reproduce the authentic experience of watching television in different eras, from the 60s to the 2000s.
And it's not just a simple Youtube playlist since this enthusiast has recreated the entireuser experience of the time: the zapping between the channels with that characteristic little snow effect, the vintage tuning buttons on televisions from the 60s, and even the possibility of coming across vintage advertisements between two programs!
The most impressive thing is the attention to detail in the reconstruction. For each decade, the interface faithfully reproduces the technology of the time. On the 60s version, you find these famous rotary buttons for changing channels. In the 80s, the aesthetics of the first color televisions were in the spotlight. And for the 90s, we switch to more modern interfaces with virtual remote control.
The story of this project is particularly touching. Joey Cato, who grew up in a small town with modest means, sought to recreate those “pop cultural” experiences that had sometimes eluded him in his youth. What started as a simple personal project with My80sTV quickly transformed into a viral phenomenon, pushing the creator to extend his concept to other decades.
On the technical side, all content is sourced from YouTube, creating a huge collaborative library of vintage content. The platform offers an impressive variety of programs: series, talk shows, cartoons, commercials… To make the experience even more authentic, the static transitions between the channels (the snow I told you about just before) cleverly serve to hide the loading time of the videos.
A particularly successful aspect is time management. When you watch a channel and come back to it later, the elapsed time is taken into account, truly making it feel like a live broadcast. The interface also offers filters allowing you to adjust the quality of the image to find the characteristic grain of old televisions.
As a forty-year-old who grew up in the 80s, I must admit that I had a little time playing and exploring this time portal. There's something comforting about coming back to these old ads, these forgotten credits and these shows, even if it's only US TV, so obviously there's less stuff I know.
In the age of VOD, there was still something magical in this completely linear television.
Of course, the big absentee from this experience remains French television. It would be great to have the equivalent (perhaps it already exists?) with our national programs, to be able to rediscover the atmosphere of Wednesday afternoons on TF1 or Saturday evenings on Antenne 2.
Check out MyRetroTV for yourself
