5 ms·

Show HN: Play20Back – MTV as It Looked 20 Years Ago

61 points by notgood 11y ago

laumars 11y ago
Ahh back when the "M" in MTV stood for "music" (and the odd Beavis and Butt-head episode).
- baseballmerpeak 11y ago
  Not "Mediocre," as it is now.
- ashmud 11y ago
  By that time, I think I saw more music videos during Beavis and Butt-head than other times of the day.
jedberg 11y ago
20 years ago is when I graduated high school. We used to actually watch MTV. Talk about nostalgia.
Mithaldu 11y ago
Pretty much entirely unusable in germany due to, roughly, half the videos being blocked. :(
- dewey 11y ago
  I think YouTube is one of my main reasons for using a VPN here in Germany. I try not to use the german internet without my VPN switched on for a couple of reasons but that's definitely the most annoying one.
  - Mithaldu 11y ago
    What service do you use? I've considered it from time to time, but i don't know which ones are reliable/useful/sanely priced.
    - dewey 11y ago
      I just use a small Kimsufi dedicated server with Gentoo running OpenVPN. I also use a small edis.at VPS in case I need an austrian IP.
  - WA 11y ago
    What are the other reasons?
    - dewey 11y ago
      - Privacy on shared Wifis (at University) - Shady law firms sending mass letters - Geo blocked content
    - maljx 11y ago
      netflix
- notgood 11y ago
  Yeah sorry, it uses the API of YouTube with USA marked as origin. I could fix it by using the JavaScript client API of YouTube for non-americans visitors; it has a rate limit so it may not work so well though.
  - dewey 11y ago
    I don't think there'll be a lot of official videos left here in Germany even if you switch to the non-american API. Most official music videos are blocked.
notgood 11y ago
Hi people of HN, I'm glad some of you like this little project of mine! BTW in case is not clear it (automatically) shows videos from exactly 20 years ago, so right now is showing videos from July of 1995. If you wonder where I get the data is by a script scraping an awesome forum called ukmix. I also filter out low-quality videos by calculating the likes/dislikes ratio and view count (data from YouTube's API), it also tries to filter out lyrics videos and other non-official music videos. Feedback is welcome. Enjoy.
- brandonmenc 11y ago
  Very cool project. Can you let us adjust the time? I'd really like to see MTV from 30 years ago.
  - notgood 11y ago
    10, 30 and 40 are easy to do because I have sources for those, so I will add that functionality soon (any other time frame would be a lot of work so probably not going to do it)
- walterbell 11y ago
  Your time travel portal works really well! How do you avoid ads being inserted into the stream?
  - notgood 11y ago
    I think AdBlock may help. BTW those ads are added by YouTube (not me)
lisowski 11y ago
This is awesome! Will definitely use it to throw a quick stream of older Music Videos up on the television. It would be cool to see a list of that month's videos or be able to customize the stream a little. For those who miss place to discover current artists through music videos, I built http://kikbak.tv http://kikbak.tv. It goes through blogs hourly to create a top 100 chart for the day. Artists spend so much money on music videos and there are no popular discovery platforms! I truly miss mtv, so let's rebuild it somehow.
- mbrownnyc 11y ago
  I actually think that's the exact opposite of the original point, and it simply should be left alone to be what it is. By "customizing" the selection, it loses a large majority of the nostalgia. Maybe... just maybe... have the default be this way, and a tiny tiny link saying "click here for the new web 2.0, users are in control, why not just search youtube yourself, upvote this, downvote that... empowering... customizable... have it your way, right away at burger king now version"
- notgood 11y ago
  Awesome! Yeah I miss good music video channels and that's why I created this; and I think there is an opportunity to make video channels better than ever, with a little help of algorithms you can do things like checking user patterns (e.g. this guy always skips country music, lets ask him if the app should always avoid country music, and so on)
EdiX 11y ago
Now I can look forward to 2021 when this will be Imitation of Life non-stop.
golergka 11y ago
Never play music or sound on load. Even if it's your page only purpose, put on a simple "play" button in the middle of the screen, and start playback after user clicks it.
- notgood 11y ago
  Ok seems reasonable, I will change that soon.
  - basecamp88 11y ago
    I prefer it this way. When you changed your TV channel to MTV, there was no play button.
  - radcam 11y ago
    Don't change it. i prefer it the way it is too.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
koonsolo 11y ago
Feeling like a teenager again! But on the other hand, thanks for making me feel old! ;)
adam12 11y ago
I like it, but I don't remember half of these songs/videos ever being on MTV. This is more of what I remember: http://www.mtv.com/music/yearbook/index.jhtml?contentId=1536070&year=1995 http://www.mtv.com/music/yearbook/index.jhtml?contentId=1536... and: The Real World Beavis and Butt-head Singled Out
- notgood 11y ago
  This is from July 1995, so the very early songs (eg January) are probably not in the site, also no music videos released after July are there right now. Also many of the songs in that list are currently on the site, maybe you didn't got lucky (is random) and you didn't get the ones that were played enough times to be memorable (for you) And no to mention human memory is very bad ;) ... (only half joking: http://science.time.com/2013/11/19/remember-that-no-you-dont-study-shows-false-memories-afflict-us-all/ http://science.time.com/2013/11/19/remember-that-no-you-dont...).
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- soylentcola 11y ago
  20 years ago I had just graduated from high school. 120 Minutes was still the best thing on MTV and yeah, Beavis and Butthead and the rest of Liquid Television were great. I still consider "The Real World" the start of when MTV (and TV in general) started moving in a direction I personally didn't like. It was MTV's big move toward scripted and unscripted dramas and away from music videos and some other "experimental" video like the aforementioned Liquid TV. I get that it was a market-driven move. Networks show what gets the viewers and viewers wanted Real World/Road Rules. Just bummed me out when those shows started pre-empting or replacing the stuff I enjoyed like Beavis and Butthead and Sifl and Olly before eventually replacing the music videos themselves. At least there are way more avenues for finding music and videos these days so I can't really be too annoyed outside of curmudgeonly nostalgia.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
gerjomarty 11y ago
I like the idents you've added as well. Was the style you used one of the styles on the American MTV? One of the big things I remember about MTV (Europe, at least) were the idents, including the track/artist ident at the start/end of songs. I haven't been able to find a decent archive of them though.
Ono-Sendai 11y ago
Video quality is a bit too good though :)
jrbeal 11y ago
Congrats! I think this is a cool idea! It looks like you're pretty much committed to a 20 year target but would it have been possible to allow the user to set that target themselves (within a given range, of course)? Instead of 20 years being the default, they could specify 25, or 15, or whatever.
sjshelby 11y ago
Bookmarked it. Ad pops up every time you get a new video. Deleted bookmark.
drb311 11y ago
You're awesome. To make it really authentic, the text that states the artist and track title shouldn't be so sharp. It should look as blurry as the video. Other than that this is a perfect bit of fun. I love the Internet.
binarymax 11y ago
So good. Feature request! intersperse classic MTV intros like these https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajbSFYV-maQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajbSFYV-maQ
w0rd-driven 11y ago
Keeping the artist and track title visible at all times would be the only usability thing I would change. I'm often going to the youtube link to find this. I keep this as a tab open in Chrome while I'm doing other work so being able to go back when I find something good and just having that information available would really help.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

61 points by notgood 11y ago

laumars 11y ago

Ahh back when the "M" in MTV stood for "music" (and the odd Beavis and Butt-head episode).

baseballmerpeak 11y ago
Not "Mediocre," as it is now.
ashmud 11y ago
By that time, I think I saw more music videos during Beavis and Butt-head than other times of the day.

jedberg 11y ago

20 years ago is when I graduated high school. We used to actually watch MTV. Talk about nostalgia.

Mithaldu 11y ago

Pretty much entirely unusable in germany due to, roughly, half the videos being blocked. :(

dewey 11y ago
I think YouTube is one of my main reasons for using a VPN here in Germany. I try not to use the german internet without my VPN switched on for a couple of reasons but that's definitely the most annoying one.
- Mithaldu 11y ago
  What service do you use? I've considered it from time to time, but i don't know which ones are reliable/useful/sanely priced.
  - dewey 11y ago
    I just use a small Kimsufi dedicated server with Gentoo running OpenVPN. I also use a small edis.at VPS in case I need an austrian IP.
- WA 11y ago
  What are the other reasons?
  - dewey 11y ago
    - Privacy on shared Wifis (at University) - Shady law firms sending mass letters - Geo blocked content
  - maljx 11y ago
    netflix
notgood 11y ago
Yeah sorry, it uses the API of YouTube with USA marked as origin. I could fix it by using the JavaScript client API of YouTube for non-americans visitors; it has a rate limit so it may not work so well though.
- dewey 11y ago
  I don't think there'll be a lot of official videos left here in Germany even if you switch to the non-american API. Most official music videos are blocked.

notgood 11y ago

Hi people of HN, I'm glad some of you like this little project of mine! BTW in case is not clear it (automatically) shows videos from exactly 20 years ago, so right now is showing videos from July of 1995. If you wonder where I get the data is by a script scraping an awesome forum called ukmix. I also filter out low-quality videos by calculating the likes/dislikes ratio and view count (data from YouTube's API), it also tries to filter out lyrics videos and other non-official music videos. Feedback is welcome. Enjoy.

brandonmenc 11y ago
Very cool project. Can you let us adjust the time? I'd really like to see MTV from 30 years ago.
- notgood 11y ago
  10, 30 and 40 are easy to do because I have sources for those, so I will add that functionality soon (any other time frame would be a lot of work so probably not going to do it)
walterbell 11y ago
Your time travel portal works really well! How do you avoid ads being inserted into the stream?
- notgood 11y ago
  I think AdBlock may help. BTW those ads are added by YouTube (not me)

lisowski 11y ago

This is awesome! Will definitely use it to throw a quick stream of older Music Videos up on the television. It would be cool to see a list of that month's videos or be able to customize the stream a little. For those who miss place to discover current artists through music videos, I built http://kikbak.tv http://kikbak.tv. It goes through blogs hourly to create a top 100 chart for the day. Artists spend so much money on music videos and there are no popular discovery platforms! I truly miss mtv, so let's rebuild it somehow.

mbrownnyc 11y ago
I actually think that's the exact opposite of the original point, and it simply should be left alone to be what it is. By "customizing" the selection, it loses a large majority of the nostalgia. Maybe... just maybe... have the default be this way, and a tiny tiny link saying "click here for the new web 2.0, users are in control, why not just search youtube yourself, upvote this, downvote that... empowering... customizable... have it your way, right away at burger king now version"
notgood 11y ago
Awesome! Yeah I miss good music video channels and that's why I created this; and I think there is an opportunity to make video channels better than ever, with a little help of algorithms you can do things like checking user patterns (e.g. this guy always skips country music, lets ask him if the app should always avoid country music, and so on)

EdiX 11y ago

Now I can look forward to 2021 when this will be Imitation of Life non-stop.

golergka 11y ago

Never play music or sound on load. Even if it's your page only purpose, put on a simple "play" button in the middle of the screen, and start playback after user clicks it.

notgood 11y ago
Ok seems reasonable, I will change that soon.
- basecamp88 11y ago
  I prefer it this way. When you changed your TV channel to MTV, there was no play button.
- radcam 11y ago
  Don't change it. i prefer it the way it is too.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

koonsolo 11y ago

Feeling like a teenager again! But on the other hand, thanks for making me feel old! ;)

adam12 11y ago

I like it, but I don't remember half of these songs/videos ever being on MTV. This is more of what I remember: http://www.mtv.com/music/yearbook/index.jhtml?contentId=1536070&year=1995 http://www.mtv.com/music/yearbook/index.jhtml?contentId=1536... and: The Real World Beavis and Butt-head Singled Out

notgood 11y ago
This is from July 1995, so the very early songs (eg January) are probably not in the site, also no music videos released after July are there right now. Also many of the songs in that list are currently on the site, maybe you didn't got lucky (is random) and you didn't get the ones that were played enough times to be memorable (for you) And no to mention human memory is very bad ;) ... (only half joking: http://science.time.com/2013/11/19/remember-that-no-you-dont-study-shows-false-memories-afflict-us-all/ http://science.time.com/2013/11/19/remember-that-no-you-dont...).
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
soylentcola 11y ago
20 years ago I had just graduated from high school. 120 Minutes was still the best thing on MTV and yeah, Beavis and Butthead and the rest of Liquid Television were great. I still consider "The Real World" the start of when MTV (and TV in general) started moving in a direction I personally didn't like. It was MTV's big move toward scripted and unscripted dramas and away from music videos and some other "experimental" video like the aforementioned Liquid TV. I get that it was a market-driven move. Networks show what gets the viewers and viewers wanted Real World/Road Rules. Just bummed me out when those shows started pre-empting or replacing the stuff I enjoyed like Beavis and Butthead and Sifl and Olly before eventually replacing the music videos themselves. At least there are way more avenues for finding music and videos these days so I can't really be too annoyed outside of curmudgeonly nostalgia.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

gerjomarty 11y ago

I like the idents you've added as well. Was the style you used one of the styles on the American MTV? One of the big things I remember about MTV (Europe, at least) were the idents, including the track/artist ident at the start/end of songs. I haven't been able to find a decent archive of them though.

Ono-Sendai 11y ago

Video quality is a bit too good though :)

jrbeal 11y ago

Congrats! I think this is a cool idea! It looks like you're pretty much committed to a 20 year target but would it have been possible to allow the user to set that target themselves (within a given range, of course)? Instead of 20 years being the default, they could specify 25, or 15, or whatever.

sjshelby 11y ago

Bookmarked it. Ad pops up every time you get a new video. Deleted bookmark.

drb311 11y ago

You're awesome. To make it really authentic, the text that states the artist and track title shouldn't be so sharp. It should look as blurry as the video. Other than that this is a perfect bit of fun. I love the Internet.

binarymax 11y ago

So good. Feature request! intersperse classic MTV intros like these https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajbSFYV-maQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajbSFYV-maQ

w0rd-driven 11y ago

Keeping the artist and track title visible at all times would be the only usability thing I would change. I'm often going to the youtube link to find this. I keep this as a tab open in Chrome while I'm doing other work so being able to go back when I find something good and just having that information available would really help.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]