Back to overview Growing up in the 90s, television was a different experience. You turned on the TV, and whatever was playing at that moment would become your entertainment. Nowadays you yourself are…
Growing up in the 90s, television was a different experience.
You turned on the TV, and whatever was playing at that moment would become your entertainment.
Nowadays you yourself are in control, you choose what you want to see, whenever you want.
Strangely enough, I miss that feeling of having something selected for me, something I cannot influence.
Maybe it's just my nostalgic musings, but why not create an afternoon project out of it and actually find out if there's something more to this nostalgic feeling.
The Project
- Take a Raspberry Pi (I used a cheap tiny Raspberry Pi 3A+)
- Fill the SD card with all your favorite shows from your childhood
- Add a script that starts playing those shows in a random order at startup
The idea is to have it plugged into a television or monitor and I can just turn it on whenever I feel like watching some random 90's tv.
The Shows (which defined the 90's for me):
Here's what's currently playing on my device:
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- Star Trek: The Next Generation
- StarGate SG-1
- Saved by the Bell
- Friends
- Dinosaurs
- Family Matters
- The Simpsons
- The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
- X-Files
- Home Improvement
- Sliders
- 3rd Rock from the Sun
- The Wonder Years
- Married with Children
- ALF
- MacGyver
- Xena: Warrior Princess
This is just a list to get started with, if you have any more 90's tips, let me know! (Mastodon details at the bottom)
Instructions
This really only took an afternoon, it's that simple.
Step 1:
Take an SD card and install Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit) on it.
You can use Raspberry Pi's imaging software, make sure to preconfigure it so it connects to the wifi and that you have your authentication details set (I made a user account called 'retro')
Step 2:
Once the image is made, boot it up with your raspberry pi and ensure that you can log in.
When logged in, create a video folder to store your files
mkdir video
Then take the SD card, plug it back into your computer (you might need a linux pc for this) and dump all your videos into a newly created 'video' folder in the root of your home directory.
If the above is too much of a hassle for you, you can just as well just keep these videos on an attached USB stick, just make sure to update the path in the script.
Step 3:
Install the software needed to play the videos:
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install vlc pulseaudio
Step 4:
Save the following script in the root of your home directory as startVideo.sh (nano startVideo.sh):
#!/bin/bash
VIDEO_DIR="/home/retro/video"
pulseaudio --start
pactl set-default-sink 1
mapfile -t video_files < <(find "$VIDEO_DIR" -type f | shuf)
for video in "${video_files[@]}" do
cvlc --fullscreen --play-and-exit "$video"
done
This just makes a list of all your videos, shuffles them and feeds them to VLC for playing. (use cvlc instead of vlc when you don't need an interface)
The pactl command was needed in my case to ensure the audio also outputs over hdmi, if you are using the headphone jack, just leave out this line, note that this might differ on other Raspberry Pi devices.
Make sure to adjust the VIDEO_DIR path to wherever you are storing the videos
Step 5:
To ensure it's always playing, we'll make a systemd service so it auto starts playing at startup:
Save the following file as /etc/systemd/system/videoplayer.service (you can use sudo nano followed by the file location)
[Unit] Description=Video Player Service After=multi-user.target [Service] User=retro Group=retro ExecStart=/home/retro/startVideo.sh Restart=always [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
And then register it as a service:
sudo systemctl enable videoplayer
Step 6:
Reboot and cross your fingers!
Future improvements
Right now I just have this plugged into a spare monitor (that has speakers built-in), but I'm looking for a small CRT to put in the corner of my office.
That would involve finding a HDMI to SCART, HDMI to s-video or similar convertor though.
Tags
TV, Nostalgia, HomeLab
You can get in touch through Mastodon:
@rxpz@social.linux.pizzaTV Time Machine: A Raspberry Pi That Plays Random 90s TV was published on 2025-09-20
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Comments
By WarOnPrivacy 2025-09-2019:245 reply
I grew up a few decades before and I lack the author's nostalgia. I think some of that is because my exposure to OTA TV was much longer. Some was because I missed TV's first Golden Age and TV trended toward awful afterward - with some exceptions (Taxi & 1980s NBC Thru night are 2). I never had cable so I can't factor that in.Growing up in the 90s, television was a different experience. You turned on the TV, and whatever was playing at that moment would become your entertainment. Strangely enough, I miss that feeling of having something selected for me, something I cannot influence.Between having control over what I watch and some of the absolutely stellar content that's come out in the last generation, I've no nostalgia for OTA TV of yore. I really like what I have.
By smelendez 2025-09-2020:51 Also, people knew what was on TV before they turned it on.
People bought TV Guide magazine, which was pages and pages of listings, or looked at the TV page in the newspaper.
You also generally had the airtimes for your favorite shows memorized (I bet a lot of people who were alive in the '90s could still tell you when, e.g., Seinfeld, ER, The Simpsons, and The X-Files were on and on what channel number).
By mingus88 2025-09-2020:04 Yeah, I grew up on a rural OTA antenna with one clear channel and two dodgy ones.
The live experience was better for zoning out. That’s about it. You had no choice.
Today I can spend 20 minutes just browsing and never settle on anything. I’m never able to just zone out.
By gerdesj 2025-09-2021:02 Well, I was born in black and white. As a lad in the UK in the '70s, we had three channels on the goggle box - BBC1 and 2 and ITV, which was regional. If you lived in the right place you could get two ITV regions equally badly. You tuned the TV with a rotary knob.
Viewing figures for some programmes were staggering due to the obvious reason - little choice. For example I seem to recall that some episodes of say Neighbours (Australian soap), had more viewers in the UK than the entire population of Australia! The marriage of Charlene (Kylie M) and that blonde bloke (Jason D) was one.
By hapticmonkey 2025-09-210:02 These sorts of things are fun projects, and I appreciate the effort that goes into them. But running my own media server with 4K mkv files I can browse and play on an OLED TV is light years ahead of what I had in the 90s, and I love it.
By ghaff 2025-09-2020:12 Certainly as an adult I was never really a channel surfer I had a lot of programs I wanted to watch and if I cared enough I would set the VCR once those were available.
By 0cf8612b2e1e 2025-09-2019:498 reply I have long thought Netflix should offer such a service. Have a sitcom channel that plays constantly from a slowly evolving list. Even better if I could just pick say Seinfeld and get random episodes from an episodic show. I do not want to have to expend energy picking a season+episode, just trying to decompress.
By starkparker 2025-09-2020:251 reply Isn't this just Pluto TV? Like, https://pluto.tv/us/live-tv/633354b63df9700007f6a1b7 is the sitcom channel, https://pluto.tv/us/live-tv/66ba495ffe11e5000881f049/details is the channel of just Cheers and Frasier, etc. Just playing non-stop through one episode after another on a schedule as quasi-"live" TV.
By 0cf8612b2e1e 2025-09-2020:46 That is exactly what I imagined! However, I would prefer a service I already use, free of commercials.
Definitely going to consider using this.
By joshmarinacci 2025-09-2019:552 reply Netflix wants you to watch their own shows, not TV from the 90s that they have to pay licensing fees for.
By 0cf8612b2e1e 2025-09-2020:23 Ah of course. Naturally there is an economic incentive to not deliver the product I want.
By ranger_danger 2025-09-214:08 They could still have a random/channel-surf button that plays their own shows in a similar way.
By Scoundreller 2025-09-2022:11 On the radio side, XM radio has a lot of channels like this. A 70s channel, 80s, 90s, 2000s, 10s, etc.
A lot of black-market IPTV services (the kind with "30 000" channels") will have dedicated channels. A Simpsons channel, etc. where you just get whatever episode it's currently playing.
By mingus88 2025-09-2020:02 Plenty of other services do this. Plex has a whole cable-style directory of “live” shows
By slig 2025-09-2020:47 WatchSeinfeld dot net, works on my TV browser.
By andix 2025-09-2021:53 I think they had this feature at some point. It randomly selected something to watch, with a skip to next button.
By jazzyjackson 2025-09-216:05 youtubeTV in my area has a Portlandia channel, non-stop on a loop. Always thought it was strange that was the only marathon channel.
It is nice not to have to pick an episode.
By add-sub-mul-div 2025-09-2020:00 You can self-host ErsatzTV and have the Plex/Jellyfin Live TV section show the channels you've programmed yourself. Highly recommend.
