Audio Video News

If you yearn for a simpler time when changing the channel meant leaving the couch and turning a knob to click your way through TV channels, you’ll appreciate the Vintage Taste TV.

Japan’s Doshisha, which sells an odd collection of items on Amazon, has branched out into television with this unusual first product: a thoroughly modern 20-inch LCD with HDMI inputs and digital outputs disguised in a mahogany cabinet built to resemble a 1950s-era TV. Yes, the channel selector and volume knob are functional.

Slated to go on sale this month, the TV includes a remote control and doubles as a storage cabinet. The Vintage Taste TV will be priced around $950, according to CNET. No word yet on whether it will be available in the U.S.

Check out this translation of an article posted on the Tokyo-based news blog RocketNews24.

In this era of touchscreens, voice controls, and brainwave reading technology, there seems to be little room for the dials we once relied on to control all of our electronic devices. My blender and toaster oven still have them, but I imagine it’s just a matter of time for these holdouts too.

Don’t get me wrong, the advent of the touchscreen has brought us into a neat little sci-fi world. But looking back there was a certain soothing feeling in smoothly twisting a dial, especially on TVs when they had those little ka-chunks when changing a television channel.

Well, now it’s back, thanks to Doshisha’s new Vintage Taste 20-inch LCD Television! Combining the latest in liquid crystal displays in a vintage 70s wood casing, the volume and channel knobs on the front panel are fully functional with that endorphin-releasing ka-chunk intact.

It would have been awesome if they had added in completely superfluous functional “v-hold” and “saturation” knobs as well, but I guess we can’t get too greedy.

Don’t be fooled by its look, however. This TV has all the trappings of a modern set with HDMI, AV, USB, LAN inputs and digital audio outputs. There is a modern remote control as well, since the novelty of getting up to change the channel is sure to wear off soon.

Best of all, thanks to the compactness of modern components, the area formerly reserved for the cathode ray tube can now be used as storage space. It’s perfect for dad to keep his scotch in for hosting his key parties or kicking back and watching Maude after a hard day’s work at the roller skate factory.

The Vintage Taste 20-inch LCD Television is set to go on sale in mid-November. However, there is no word yet as to where one can be bought or how much it will cost. That of course will be a major factor of whether or not to take this trip down memory road—that and how difficult it would be to modify one of those coaxial game-TV switchboxes to work on a PS4.