Television the way it felt when you were eight

Television used to have a beginning. And an end. In between, you just sat there, on time, because you knew: once it’s over, it’s over.

Saturday morning. You were awake before the channel even started broadcasting, waiting for the test card to give way to cartoons. There was no “watch later”. Sleep in and you’d missed the episode, and by Monday everyone at school knew what had happened.

Series in the afternoon, always the same time, always the same order. The film at 20:15 in the evening. Come out of the bathroom at 20:40 and you’d missed the opening. That was exactly the point: a programme you can miss is one you sit down for.

And then there was teletext. Page 100 off by heart. Three digits typed in, then waiting for the page to come round. The chunky remote with the rubber keys. The little burst of static between two channels. A picture that never quite held still.

Today you’ve got 4,000 films on your own server, and you scroll through tiles for half an hour only to watch nothing. Endless choice replaced television. And, somehow, did away with it.

90sTV winds that back. It turns your Jellyfin library into channels that simply run. You switch on and it’s already playing, mid-programme, like it used to be. You can miss things again. And yes: it crackles, it flickers, teletext is back, and your phone becomes the chunky remote.

No streaming service, no account, no cloud, no adverts that miss you when you’re gone. It’s your films, your server, your living room, just served the way it felt when you were eight: you sat down, and television decided what was on.

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Switch on instead of picking. That’s why 90sTV exists, for Mac, Apple TV and iPad.