Retro TV
iOS app by Walter Tengler. Entertainment · Walter Tengler
- Store rating
- 0 / 5
- Store rating count
- 0
- Download price
- 2.99 USD
- In-app purchases
- Unknown
- Version
- 1.0
- Listing last refreshed
- 2026-09-10
View the original store listing
Store description excerpt
A century of television on your Mac. Drop any video file onto Retro TV and watch it through six lovingly modeled televisions — from John Logie Baird's 1928 mechanical scanner to a 2024 OLED. Each set has its own bezel, its own screen geometry, and its own era-correct signal model. This isn't a CRT filter pasted over your footage. It's a real-time, two-pass Metal rendering pipeline that simulates the signal first (noise, chroma bleed, head-switch bands, hue drift) and then the display second (scanlines, shadow mask, phosphor glow, barrel curvature, vignette). THE SIX TELEVISIONS • 1928 — Baird Televisor Mechanical, 30-line, glowing neon orange on near-black. The first TV anyone ever owned. Your video, reduced to flickering horizontal strips at 12.5 frames per second. • 1939 — Early B&W Console Pure monochrome on a round-faced cathode-ray tube, with edge ringing and RF noise. The look of pre-war television, when "the picture" was a miracle. • 1958 — Philco Predicta The most beautiful television ever designed. Black-and-white, art-deco silhouette, the picture tube floating above the wooden cabinet. • 1965 — Color Console Early NTSC color in a mid-century wooden cabinet. Slight chroma bleed, cross-color shimmer, the gentle hue drift that gave NTSC its nickname: Never The Same Color. • 1985 — VHS-era Plastic CRT A boxy beige set playing back tape. Heavy chroma bleed, a head-switch noise band at the bottom of the frame, tracking jitter at the top. The texture of a Saturday-morning cartoon recorded off-air. • 2024 — Modern OLED Frameless, deep blacks, perfect color. Your video as it actually looks. PLAY ANYTHING • Drag and drop any video file from Finder. Each one becomes a channel. • Browse and play from local folders, with recursive scanning. • Search the Internet Archive's vast collection of public-domain films and stream them straight into the set. • Save favorites for one-click recall. FEELS LIKE A REAL TV • An era timeline at the bottom of the window lets you jump between sets chronologically — 1928 on the left, 2024 on the right. • A subtle CRT-collapse animation plays when you switch channels, with a procedurally generated relay click and a brief burst of pink noise. • A "CH 03" badge flashes in warm amber when you change channels. • When no video is loaded, the screen shows an SMPTE color-bar test card with the classic "PLEASE STAND BY" lettering. CONTROLS • Space — play / pause • ←/→ — seek ±10 seconds (Shift for ±60) • ↑/↓ — volume ±5% • M — mute • [ / ] — previous / next channel • B — open / close the channel sidebar WHO IT'S FOR • Anyone who grew up with a CRT in the living room. • Filmmakers and editors who want to preview footage with period-accurate picture characteristics — not a slapped-on Instagram filter. • Anyone who has ever wanted to watch the latest streaming show through a 1958 Philco Predicta. (You can.) The picture you grew up with, the picture your parents grew up with,
Review coverage
AppRill has captured 0 reviews for this app. This is a collected sample, separate from the store rating count. Latest review capture: Not captured yet.
Recent captured chart positions
No chart positions have been captured for this app yet.
Chart position, rating count and review coverage do not establish downloads, revenue or profit. Understand the differences.