Daily Archives: December 5, 2021

Decemberween: The Cathode Ray Dude

Do you want a twenty minute video of someone hooking up an original Nintendo Entertainment System to a proper amplifier to see how its demodulator unit broadcasts?

Why Is Your NES A TV Station? (That's Weird)

This video is from someone who I’m mostly familiar with as Gravis. Gravis, the Cathode Ray Dude, is a nice person who’s interested in the history of videography and this particular period of technology. How we made things before everything was digital and everything could translate things onto the internet.

This is also an interesting thing because I’ve kind of been aware of Gravis for a long time, on twitter, thinking of him as, like, a ‘step-follower?’ I don’t follow him, he doesn’t follow me, but thanks to sharing mutual followers, we’ve spoken regularly enough that he stands out in my memory of ‘oh that guy? yeah he’s cool.’

Then I found – this year! – that not only did he have a youtube channel about cameras and broadcasting and mechanical-digital media overlap, but uhh, that I found that super interesting and compelling.

This is a really beautiful kind of educational media. It’s storytelling through devices, but it’s also humanised through someone just sharing their very genuine interest in things. If you want something chill and tech-based that you probably don’t know already, and from someone who isn’t about to drop slurs at some random point? Check Gravis’ stuff out.

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