It was just about a hundred years ago that Philo T. Farnsworth ushered in the Age of Television with his developments in that technology. I'll not get into the debate whether he was the actual "inventor" of television, that's hotly contested, plus, for something like television, with all its constituent parts, it's hard to say one person was the sole inventor.
But the fact remains that in just a smidge under a century, we went from the clunky machine shown above to our modern world of ubiquitous and easily viewed TV with its endless content in often stunning clarity and from virtually every nation in the world.
Ol' Philo would never have guessed the scope of his Frankenstein's monster and would be amazed to see its abilities today.
To wit I found the ultimate testament to the progress made in the realm of television, a web-based streaming service that can almost effortlessly bring a massive catalogue of televised content from literally all over the world at the simple click of your mouse (or the tap of your finger if you want to be an idiot and watch TV on your phone).
The site is called Famelack and, as promised, it provides you with an almost mindboggling array of content from countries you can select on its homepage via a 3-D globe interface. Click on a country and all the TV channels this site has available to you, which, for instance, in the case of say the US, you'll have hundreds to chose from. Oh, and its all free. No ads (other than some of the feeds have built-in commercials broadcast but most don't and just show some kind of holding pattern screen like the one shown below) and no account needed. How is this "legal?" I'm not asking. My guess is that all these channels are probably pirated off of the satellite transmissions from the respective networks, but I'm not sure. Like I said, one "tell-tale" hint is that they often will have a "Be right back" screen while the broadcast is paused to allow local stations to use that time slot to pump out their commercials to their "legit" viewers. Apparently this site has already changed its name, maybe more than a few times, probably due to "feeling the heat" of whoever would want to put the kybosh on streaming out networks live feeds to just anybody. They may not be around for long.
In the meantime though, it provides a great way to get that TV itch scratched. For me, it means I can occasionally view Central Florida TV local news from spots like Orlando or Tampa so I can know what's "going on around town" so to speak. I get ample world and national news from YouTube and the like but not so much from "my neck of the woods."
Another useful application would be live televised content like Saturday Night Live, not what's uploaded by NBC to their YouTube channel hours later, but live, while the show is, well, live.
And then there's also the important aspect of getting information from other perspectives around the world, like, for instance, what do other countries TV news have to say about the Iran War... especially Iran itself. I watched an English-language station there and it was so full of anti-American, pro-regime propaganda. Live footage of bombed civilian facilities where there have, according to them, been mass casualties of innocent people at the hands of the Zionists and The Great Satan America -- yes they actually used that phrase! It was so weird hearing it from "their mouths" unfiltered.
Here are a few screencaps I took from my television journey around the world in just about 30 minutes or so. Late evening TV news on hold for a commercial, exclusive content networks like the Carol Burnett show channel, and one called the SNL Vault (I guess non-stop episodes of old SNL) from the US, start off the collection:
Brazil: Some music show featuring this singer. Maybe he's famous in Brazil, I don't know, everything being sung and announced was all in Portuguese.
Cuba: This channel was focused on promoting tourism. They had a feature showing a hospital and doctors and such and though I don't speak Spanish, I could make out words that sounded like "medical tourism" then these shots of pristine beaches and Old Havana for other tourist activities. I guess they're either in denial about their reported crisis they're supposedly in, or this is just propaganda, or, are we being told the whole truth?
Congo: Some religious show. It was 5:42 am there when I was accessing this at 11:42 pm last night so this could be one of those 24-hour religious channels or some Wake-up Kinshasa and Repent! kinda morning show?
Ukraine: Here another religious show playing somber baroque music, similar to my Albinoni adagios. Likely for the same reasons, though many, many more and for a whole different war.
UAE: Here's a Dubai station news piece about the war showing French president Macron speaking. I don't think American news channels even bother trying to get the perspective of other countries any more, but other countries are still interested in what countries other than themselves have to say.
Israel: This was some AI generated show depicting weird historical people. Not sure what it was about since it was in Hebrew but maybe it was related to scripture since it was early morning there and it was their Jewish equivalent to the something like the other religious content shown above? Again, who knows. That's part of the fun -- trying to figure out what your watching.
Iran: So the first channel seemed to be again, like the above religious ones, focused on some holy shit but now it was Muslim, of course. The second shot is the total propaganda news channel I spoke about earlier where according to the chyron, not only did the Great Satan and the Zionists kill and injure civilians, even cars were destroyed.
Russia: Ho hum, some news piece about a kids musical and the awards they won. Big whoop.
China: Chinese sounds so awesome. Of course I have no fucking clue what they're saying, but it just always sounds so dramatic. It could have been a snippet news piece about a local traffic jam advising viewers to avoid a certain highway into town, who knows, but it sounded like it was really freakin' important.
Australia: This newsreader (I think that's what Commonwealth nations call "anchors," right?) was just getting into "the war news."
Afghanistan: This weird guy interviewing this scorching hottie. Yowza! I'm sure Mr. Ironman Taliban there wasn't thinking "Is some fat, old homosexual American watching me while drooling right now?"
Italy: I think the middle of the night there so there was this loud infomercial sounding show... Is this an Italian "Psychic Friends Network featuring Dionnotella Warwickinni?" Alright, it's getting late here now and my mind is running dry...
Vietnam: Not sure if this was depicting Vietnamese ancient warriors or Chinese but it looked kinda like a soap opera set in like 900 AD or something.
That's all I got for now, Ghost of Philo. Is this what you thought we'd do with your creation?
