Big new project in the works

Going to have to neglect the blog this week because a big project came into my head instead. Do you remember in my last post where I was talking about all the cool websites showing up in my referrer logs? Well, one of the sites I found there is msx.gay, where I discovered their nifty HTML cable guide. If you grew up with cable TV in the era with the Prevue Guide (Later TV Guide Channel) this should give you an instant rush of nostalgia. Before the mid-2000s, when cable boxes could start including interactive electronic guides, the only way to see what was on TV was to watch this channel, usually on channel 2, which would show a slowly-scrolling list of everything on TV on constant loop. (If you didn't have cable, the only way to see what was on TV was checking the newspaper or buying a physical magazine!)

I was actually thinking about the Prevue Guide relatively recently. I thought it was completely dead as a concept, but I was in the hospital for a few days in November (don't worry, I'm mostly fine) and to my great surprise the hospital TV still has some variation of the Prevue Guide. It makes sense: it's not cost-efficient for them to supply a separate cable box for each and every TV in the facility, so TV service is just a single amplified bundle of analog signals distributed through the whole compound. I doubt the originating signal is analog, I assume that's not a thing anymore,¹ but the version of the signal that made it to my room was definitely analog, because the only thing going into the TV was a single co-axial cable.² It used the TV's internal tuner, which is still a thing, to select a channel. There was no interactivity whatsoever.

I spent a good amount of time watching the Prevue Channel, or at least with it on, especially when I was in too much pain to think. Once I was a bit more lucid, I started thinking about how the selection experience of cable TV in this form is a good middle ground between the two extremes of the internet: having every possible option before you in an infinite sea of content and no idea what to watch, or an algorithm tuned to show you exactly what it thinks you want to see. Neither option is great. With the Prevue Channel and a reasonable number of channels, you have some control but not too much. Linear TV could provide a friendlier version of TV than what the internet gives us.

That is, if there was anything on TV I want to watch. I stand by my opinion that 21st century TV content is mostly a wasteland of nostalgia and reality slop. For whatever time I had that needed to be killed (when I was conscious enough), I mostly watched the SpongeBob channel, which is still technically called Nicktoons. It's devolved (or evolved?) into a 24/7 SpongeBob SquarePants channel, which is kind of a shame, because there are a number of Nicktoons from the 90s I think probably still hold up.³ I get it though, SpongeBob is inoffensive and universally tolerable. It's not the worst choice, especially for a hospital.

Still, what a shame that TPC could be a useful and healthy interface for finding video entertainment but it's mostly wasted on a dying medium.

So when I found MSX's recreation, I thought... What if I made a program guide of my favorite YouTube videos? I could come up with some fake channels to represent my interests, and give each programming block a link to a youtube video. People could have the Prevue experience of slow, curated content with limited but sufficient choices, but actually have something good to watch.

So, that's exactly what I'm doing. The HTML guide is somewhat limited: it uses JavaScript to show a real-time clock, but the program listings are static. Also, making the show titles clickable doesn't really work on a vertically scrolling marquee, I found the targets too difficult to hit. (it would also be silly, because you don't choose what show to watch on Prevue by tapping it on the screen, you use the remote control.) So I designed my own navigation interface which I'm calling VCR+.

The right way to do this would probably be to have a .json with all your TV listing data, and use JavaScript that updates data dynamically based on the current time. I've never made anything like this, and I didn't want to spend a ton of time on coding, so I went with a more manual approach: there are 16 .html files each with a 90-minute block of shows for all 20 fake channels.⁴ When you visit the index, it'll send you to the appropriate guide for your current local time. You then watch the channels scroll, and when you decide what you want to watch, and use the VCR+ interface to select a channel and a time slot. For example, if it's 8:44 AM and the listings are showing blocks for 8:00, 8:30 and 9:00, and I want to watch what's on channel 11 at 8:30, I choose the middle of three drop-down menus and pick 11. It'll take me to the video for that timeslot (the embedded version, which loads much more quickly than a full YouTube page.)

There are no actual time constraints, there's nothing stopping me from watching what was on at 8 if it's already 8:30. That's the magic of VCR+. There's also a time machine, so you can look at the listings for all 16 blocks for each 90-minute chunk of the day. I debated adding a feature like this, because it adds an amount of choice real TV never had, but some people are just never going to be awake at 3:00 AM (hopefully me) but might be curious what's on at that time. For people who are up at 3:00 AM, they'll get the experience naturally, and have different options presented by default than the people who tuned in during primetime. I really want to recreate the experience of being up at some ungodly hour watching Prevue, seeing a show title and thinking "what the fuck is that", changing the channel and thinking "what the fuck am I watching?". That's an important part of the TV-watching experience that's been lost.

It's going to auto-refresh every 15 minutes, so it'll stay up-to-date if you leave it on in the background. You can have it up while you do something else, and if you look over and see a show that sounds interesting, you can tune in.

The programming and design is pretty much done, all that's left is populating the schedule, which is a much bigger task than it seems. I know I've watched at least 432 hours⁵ of good shows on youtube in my life, I wouldn't have started this project if I haven't, but remembering it all while trying to make a balanced schedule is the tricky part. I could easily fill the "old tech" channel entirely with Techmoan and Cathode Ray Dude videos and it would be a banger—and they're both well-represented—but I want a lot of channels for people to discover and I want the experience to be different at different times of day. It's wild how easy it is to forget some of my favorite videos of all time when I'm trying to remember them. They'll come to me as I keep working on it, though. I'll probably be done with the project and about to release it when I think "oh my God, I have channel [x] and I didn't include [y]??" And I'll have to figure out places to fit them in. It's okay, I know my brain will come through for me.

It'll probably be a bit before I'm ready to show anything; I only have a couple completed blocks and they're very much subject to change. I'll share the channels, because I'm pretty sure this is the final list:

02. GUIDE .... Programming Guide
03. BLIPt .... Video games from the 70s through the early 80s
04. Parallax . Video games from the late 80s through the early 90s
05. Morph .... Video games from the late 90s and beyond
06. reCAP .... 20th century tech
07. TORX ..... Hacking, repair and DIY
08. TatTV .... The worst that money can buy
09. SoapBox .. Society, culture and politics
10. Squawk ... Money, law and politics
11. vPUB ..... Writing and literature
12. Photon ... Science and critical thinking
13. U2N ...... Animation of the USA
14. J2N ...... Animation of Japan
15. Rosetta .. History, language and the world
16. Hz! ...... Music and the performing arts
17. TTNN ..... 21st century tech, the internet and its culture
18. Balcony .. Film & TV
19. Chomp .... All things edible
20. Crittr ... Creatures of planet Earth

Some of these will be much easier to fill than others. For example, Chomp won't be easy. I don't watch any actual useful cooking shows; I should, but what I actually watch is a lot of videos about convenience food, MRE reviews, weird/cool restaurants and eating weird/gross things for entertainment. Can I find 24 hours of content? I mean there's always Tasting History, but as much as I like his stuff, I don't want it to just be the Max Miller channel. (update: I have decided to change the channel to "food, travel and events". This works out well, because I didn't have a good spot for many of Jenny Nicholson and Swell Entertainment's videos. Unsure if the name will stay the same. It's a good word, so probably.)

I didn't think a me-based cable service would be complete without an anime channel, but I'm having a tough time with that one too. There used to be a ton of cool/weird older anime that no IP holders cared enough about to remove, but it feels like Crunchyroll is licensing old shows and erasing them faster than I can remember them. Were Crunchyroll subscribers really champing at the bit for exclusive access to the 1980s Fist of the North Star series? Were they fuming that any schmuck with the internet could watch Urisei Yatsura without paying the CrunchyToll? No, I don't think so. I hate seeing shows locked up in subscription jail, and it's to no one's benefit. Probably not even Crunchyroll's! How many new subscribers were gained? Was it enough to recoup whatever they paid to license them? I doubt it, they just want to be the Sultans of Anime, and keep it all to themselves, and once they have all the anime they'll be able to raise the price to forty dollars a month, and you'll have no choice but to pay it because they have all the anime.⁶

Oh well. If I can't find enough to fill the schedule I can change it to the "anime and also weird fansubbed Soviet animation" channel, or И2N (Интернационалом Car2N).

Good grief, I spent much more time talking about it than I intended; I could've used that time to actually work on it! Needless to say, I'll let you know when I have more to announce. You can follow me on the fediverse for the most timely updates 🦝