Readers may recall my passion for doing something with the dead/black/huge televisions that are on many walls of our houses (the house that we bought in Florida actually came with six flat-screen TVs at no extra charge because the previous owners didn’t feel like demounting and moving them), e.g.,
- Geochron to liven up the dead wall space of a flat screen TV (2020)
- How to use a television as a digital picture frame? (2022 edition)
- Best LCD television for use as a digital photo display? (2012)
I’m surprised that nobody has implemented a business idea that I proposed to entrepreneurial friends about 10 years ago: a streaming service that turns any television into a “virtual window”, but not a window onto the boring street where one actually lives. A subscriber could choose to be looking out at the Champs Elysée, at the crazy intersection in Shibuya (Tokyo), a lake/mountain view from a famous resort hotel, etc. Since all of my ideas are terrible, from a business point of view, the original concept was a cable TV channel. Cable companies offer roughly 50 music channels for ambient use. Why not 50 virtual windows as well?
High quality webcams have only gotten cheaper in the decade since I proposed this idea. Internet has become faster and more reliable. Why hasn’t this idea caught on?
There is a construction documentation company that branched out into this market a little and offers earthcamtv.com, which seems to be supported by low-rent ads rather than subscription. They have an Android TV app so I guess it would work on a Sony, TCL, or HiSense . I don’t think anyone would want this running continuously in his/her/zir/their house.
Here’s a newer twist on the idea: Immigration TV. This could have virtual windows into the countries that enrich us, e.g., Venezuela, Haiti, Colombia, India, Pakistan, etc. It could be sponsored by both the Democratic Party (channels that show how great life is in places that migrants claim are too dangerous to inhabit) and the Republicans (channels that show the crowded, dirty, and disorganized conditions that people in source countries have created for themselves).
As far as I know, all current TVs lack the interface required to be programmed to “wake up at 0900 and start up the Virtual Windows app” so it would be somewhat tedious to go around to every TV in the house every morning and configure this.
Samsung is still trying to sell people on its absurdly deficient The Frame system (requires an external box that nobody has a place to put except maybe if a house was built from scratch with The Frame in mind; they make a wireless version of the box, but of course everyone says that it doesn’t stay connected). Most humans are much more drawn to moving pictures than to still images, even still images of great art (art museums that are free still struggle to attract a wide audience). Why wouldn’t LG introduce The Window in which the television comes preloaded with the ability to show streams from curated webcams around the world?
Partial personal list of desired virtual windows:
- One for each of the nicest Japanese gardens in Japan (that would be around 50 window choices?)
- One for the bonsai collection with pond behind at Morikami Japanese garden in Palm Beach County, Florida (good for the Japanese winter months)
- Ngorongoro Crater (Tanzania)
- Churchill, Manitoba (polar bars)
- Piazza San Marco, Venice (from a second-story window since nobody needs to see the pigeons up close)
- Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara, Lisbon
- Portofino South condo rooftop in West Palm Beach (looks out towards Mar-a-Lago so we can keep our envy levels appropriately high)
- Miami waterfront skyscraper (any) looking out toward Biscayne Bay and Miami Beach (watch the cruise ships come and go)
- Looking out on the main square of Santiago de Compostela to watch pilgrims who’ve completed their walks
Bill Gates beat you to the idea, in 1991. The problems of billionaires trickle-down, like their economics:
https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19910526/1285524/bill-gates-50000-computer-paintings-on-call
He started a company called Interactive Home Systems. I wonder what happened to it.
[Epstein video feed jokes elided.]
Fire: Bill Gates’s idea is Samsung’s The Frame. Bill G never wanted to have a virtual window into, e.g., the parts of Africa where he was do-gooding.
Bill can pretend he is Captain Nemo here:
https://wp.clutchpoints.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bill-aquarium-justrichest-600×451-1.png
He named his big house Xanadu 2.0, after Charles Foster Kane’s house in Citizen Kane. Throw in some Great Gatsby delusions (the library apparently has a quote on the ceiling from The Great Gatsby, : “He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.”)
I wonder if Gates still owns the beach shack in West Palm Beach, maybe Phil can drop by and watch a real-time feed from a Moroccan souk.
As I earn my billions, I’m waiting for giant, Earth friendly, low power, color e-ink screens to show my virtual forgeries. 🌊
Anyone can solder the power button to a raspberry pi to make a TV turn on by a schedule, but the content has to look good. Webcams look like turds because they have to withstand the environment. Animated, photo realistic renderings of virtual environments are still a bit unattainable. You’d probably want a realtime AI generated environment.
> newer twist on the idea: Immigration TV. This could have virtual windows into the countries that enrich us, e.g., Venezuela, Haiti, Colombia, India, Pakistan, etc.
Related: “Trash Detection Game” is going viral! The goal is to find anywhere in an Indian city where there is no visible garbage. Try it by randomly opening Google Street View anywhere in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, etc. I gave up after 8 tries, seeing piles of trash dumped in urban lots, streets, rivers.
So “Smart” TVs are not that smart.
Haven’t turned on my 15 y/o, 47-inch, flat screen TV in over three years, I get all my video through my $150 Chromebook and $15/mo. ad-free Youtube.
Norway has Slow TV.
https://www.scandinaviastandard.com/slow-down-with-norways-slow-tv/
Slow TV would be awesome for the VirtualWindow. Have a camera pointing out the front or side of a cruise ship that is connected to Starlink.
Our new Sony TV has Chromecast built in so…Google Photo albums display in rotation under the Screensaver option.
I have found that moving electronic tableaus are less interesting than stepping outside of the house. While I am in the house, these moving tableaus are an intrusion on my piece [sic] of mind as they are distracting to the point of stupefication [sp?]. As to this stupid little screen I am typing at now, yawl uh bunchuh nuhrdz. Take that interwebs(tm).
What if the screen were a perfect simulation of a real window into a beautiful garden? How would that be distracting? A real window in a real house that looks out into the back yard isn’t distracting, right? (I guess some of the garden views that I proposed would end up being distracting because those gardens are visited by tourists. Maybe the system would need to rotate among gardens around the world to show only those that are (1) currently illuminated by the sun, and (2) currently closed to tourism (e.g., a Japanese garden from 5 am to 9 am in the summer)
Philip, what is refresh rate frequency for real window? What is its resolution? How much electromagnetic radiation, barely detectable heat and noise it produces?
TV is tiring over long time interval even when it shows beautiful garden
@philg: the better the simalcrum the greater the distraction. I have a real garden right outside. Most importantly, I have real outdoor air and real sunlight and his warmth and birds who I am getting to know. There are screens at the local bar that I can watch with good company. The company is always better than the screens, but the screens help us share a common experience. The best communal experiences are without screens.
The experience you describe might be best visually and aurally experienced with an apple ivisor. There are “4d” movie experiences that incorporate wind and mist and motion.
Simulated non-visio-aural sensory communal environments do exist. Sauna is perhaps man’s first, and best “virtual reality”. The heat of the sun experienced in the dead of winter.
Yankees spend vast sums so that they may simulate their cooler native climes in Florida. Virtual Reality painted by air temperature.
I guess a big black void on the wall is less distracting than a window, virtual or real!
You might like NamibiaCam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydYDqZQpim8
My new 83 OLED LG G5 has “Always Ready” where in can show art or something else when TV is “off”.
But I immediately turned it off – I don’t want to waste OLED panel on $5000 TV if nobody is watching it. My guess most people wouldn’t do it for the same reason.