This assumes that this was intended as a truly practical item. However, this is a product of a watch manufacturer. Its usefulness is also defined in social terms. It's an expensive novelty item, a status symbol, a conversation piece, an icebreaker, etc, then it's also a practical item. This one doesn't achieve these social functions by mechanical complications, a multitude of jewels or fine engravings by monk-like artisans, but by putting the product on the very forefront of modern technological development, something that would be hard to catch up on by more traditional watch manufacturers. It's also a contribution to the ever-ongoing competition between traditional mastery and modern inventiveness and the struggle for status. – That said, I love this product as a period piece.
Just imagine what kind of statements this products allows its owner to make: You have made your fortune, as may be clearly seen by the fact that you could obtain this product. (That is, it was affordable to the middle classes, but who knows, this must have been as expensive as it is futuristic!) You are aware of and interested in modern developments, which probably relates to how you made your fortune. You're not someone who just inherited their wealth, indulging in sentimentalities. You care for hard facts. You are a modern business man. You are probably self-made. You are important enough to justify a significant investment to keep you as up to date as possible. It's of vital importance to you and probably an unknown quantity of dependents that you won't miss the news. You are always on the go and you have an extraordinary situational awareness. Etc, etc. Also, you are James Bond. (The Yuppiness of this item is quite immeasurable.)
Exactly. This watch was the Bored Ape NFT profile picture of its time. It shows you're rich and you're with / ahead of the current times. And in comparison to a bored ape, it cost less, could be taken to parties and other in-person social functions and you could even sneakily follow sports events during boring meetings.
I think, it's important to note that consumer goods in the 1980s were very much culture building (in the sense of terms like "nation building"). They allowed consumers to express themselves, to align themselves along a certain set of values, to show off, to organize in recognizable cultural tribes, they provided identity, etc. In a sense, 1980s tech was what the FB profile became to the internet generation. (I personally enjoy this cultural aspect.)
There's a scene in season 1 of Halt and Catch Fire where rich grandparents give one as a gift[0], which seemed to say they felt that their daughter had married below her station.
Yes. It's interesting to see so many replies in this thread completely missing the aspects you describe and only focusing on the practical usage of the watch.
I'll also add that bubble-era Japan was full of novelty electronics like this. Companies were investing heavily in R&D, and even if sales weren't great, these kinds of items boosted prestige and reputations for being cutting edge.
This sounds very plausible. I wonder if it was the actual business case for making this watch. They must have had to justify the expense of development, I always wondered if they learn enough from the endeavour or gained enough from new tooling that that was the justification.
There’s no reason the face has to be on the outside of the arm.
I remember when we had the databank watches (in the 80s), we’d wear them on the inside of our wrists since they were easier to use. The arm is in a position not much different from holding a smartphone with one hand.
IDK, I mean...imagine you have access to a desk which can support a human arm... Or the top of your backpack sitting on your lap as you ride the train or bus.
Then imagine, additionally, if your brain didn't seem to mind watching TV at an angle, since it always watches it at an angle, just on a different axis of rotation, anyway.
IDK, some things are cool and also _just_ useful enough to be a no-brainer if you have the money. Throw in James Bond ads and you get a social utility bonus. Lend it to a friend in exchange for someone's phone number, or whatever. It's good stuff in lots of ways.
Agreed that it’s kind of ridiculous to assume you can’t rest your arm… people do with phones all the time. To be fair, old lcd displays did have a razor thin viewing angle.
The use-case of it could be to primarily listen and just glance occasionally, like an augmented radio. News and sports events could fit the bill for example - listen most of the time and take a look for 30 seconds when something interesting/relevant is mentioned.
This is probably the primary use case. Although modified FM radio receivers could easily receive analog TV audio it just would be a harder sell.
Also, sometimes companies do things just to show off their capabilities to the market, especially Japanese companies. Sony were the kings of this tactics back in the day.
As a side note, in the typical western FM band allocation (88 - 108MHz), the analog TV audio carrier for channel 6 would be located just under that (at 87.7MHz), and since most radio receivers could go a little under and over that range, most people could listen to channel 6 audio on the go.
This generated an entire market of "TV" stations who's main purpose was to broadcast audio, in the United States they were nicknamed "Franken-FMs".
One of the examples was showing a baseball match in progress. I imagine that would appeal to the Japanese "salary-man" where he could be commuting or even working and keeping up with what is happening out on the pitch.
Who says you have to be wearing the watch while you are using it? Do you hold your phone in your hand for 30-60m when watching an "entire TV show"? I sure don't! I prop my phone up against something just like I'd do with a TV watch.
I’m not a baseball fan, but this seems like the type of thing that could be good to sneak the game in when a person is dragged to a function they don’t want to be at. The typical radio + earbud in all the sitcoms is fine, but being able to quickly check out your wrist to see a play, or replay seems like it would make it a lot better, while still being discrete.
That's a good point. When I used to wear an old Casio digital watch, I would often take it off my wrist if I was going to do any serious timing with the stopwatch.
Of course if you're going to take it off your wrist for any serious viewing, they could have just put a bigger LCD on the tuner device itself, since you have to carry that anyway.
But that wouldn't have the "wow" factor of a TV watch!
When I used to wear a digital chronometer/clock (ahem!) I totally took it off for serious timing. And it was all so serious, when you were the holder of a timer that counted milliseconds.
When I was, I guess, grade 5 a kid showed up at school with a "TV watch". It didn't require extra connections, it tuned in OTA broadcast TV (basically CBC, at the time). This would have been in the early 80s.
I have no idea where he go the watch or how. They were a lower income family and lived in very modest circumstances but he always had the latest and greatest, brought it to school, caused a huge commotion, and would have the device taken away (think personal sized PacMan consoles, sling shots, those robot toys, etc).
It did work. The way it was used was a ton of kids would crowd around this guy and watch a grainy, poorly rendered, CBC program with faint sound (I recall a headphone jack), and we marveled at how cool it was that he could watch TV at school. Unfortunately, nothing interesting would ever be on, and the teacher took it away immeadiately.
When I was at uni, I made an AR app intended for the iPad, that would let the user walk around a specific part of Brighton and see historical facts as overlays on the screen.
One of the early feedback comments was that it was quite exhausting holding out the ipad for more than a minute at the time.
Definitely. As a high school kid in the early 90s a classmate once had a pocket sized TV. The tiny screen and terrible viewing angle didn't stop us from crowding around it during break time!
You never went to a baseball game, and you are under 40?
You would normally see people with portable TVs, so that they could see the TV broadcast, hear the color commentary, and catch instant replays. Having a watch with small dongle receiver, with low weight and low power consumption, is so much MORE convenient than lugging the shoebox-sized TV around.
I can imagine similar convenience on a train commute.
I wear my smartwatch on the inside of my wrist. I've always worn my watches on the inside. When I was super cool in middle school I wore my calculator watch on the inside too. And my daughter actually wears hers on the edge of her wrist.
I would definitely be comfortable watching on my wrist.
I'd imagine if the main purpose of the watch is to watch TV, I can wear it on the inside of the wrist, making it very comfortable to watch for a long time.
That's basically the position when I hold my phone in my left hand anyway.
I see this more for entertainment on public transportation, waiting rooms, etc. for short 10-20 minute spurts. Holding your phone in front of your face is similarly uncomfortable, but we all do it.
If the screen was on the bottom of your wrist you could probably rest your elbow on your knee or elsewhere comfortably for a that length of time and watch that way.
I have a neighbor who only uses the touchscreen on their ThinkPad, except when they have to type something.
The other day I stopped by to help them troubleshoot a problem, and they had to do a password reset.
They touched the Old Password field on the screen and typed in their old password on the keyboard. They touched New Password on the screen and typed in the new one. Of course then they had to touch the second New Password field on the screen and enter it again on the keyboard. Finally they reached up to touch the OK button on the screen.
I mentioned that they could avoid going back and forth between screen and keyboard by using the Tab and Enter keys. They asked, "What are those?" I pointed them out on the keyboard and explained what they do.
We will see if the message got through. Hopefully with some gentle encouragement over time, it will.
My real point is that yes, some people do use touchscreen laptops.
My wife was a devotee of the touch screens on her Windows laptops (she had an HP and a Surface), although now she seems to use her iPad (with smart keyboard) exclusively except with rare sessions at her desk to use the laptop.
She always tends to tap the screen when she uses one of my Macs. It was fascinating during the early days of the pandemic seeing my kids (who were in kindergarten at the time) adapt more easily to trackpad+keyboard on the Mac vs touchscreen on iPad than she did.
I remember being at a college computer lab and watching someone trying to use the mouse on the Mac while holding it suspended in air. It made Scotty's mouse moment in Star Trek IV completely understandable.
I don't get it. If I still have to carry around a walkman-like thing, why bother with the watch? Why not put the screen on the walkman-like thing, and eliminate the wire through my sleeve?
Because this is what other electronics manufacturers like Sony, Panasonic and Sinclair already did. On the other hand, there was this long lasting dream of television on the wrist (compare Dick Tracy and its audiences now having grown up to become potent consumers) and Seiko was a watch manufacturer. This long lasting dream is also why we have now smart watches, but still no wrist TV. :-)
BTW, the usefulness of these tiny pocket TVs of the early 1980s was quite heavily contested. The Seiko interpretation of the theme had some going for it regarding the the show-off factor, which isn't to be discounted for when it comes to (expensive) novelty items.
With the power of the iphone's main chip, Apple could come out with more auxiliary devices. An AR headset that utilizes your iphone for all the processing. It's kind of how carplay/Android auto works.
I think this is sound design consideration in action-- we all have, "supercomputers" in our proverbial wallets-- assuming that conspicuous consumption is likely to continue-- what, "add-ons" could you incorporate into future, "phones?"
We too easily get lost in, "but actually conspicuous consumption is kind of killing the planet" land as designers and consumer electronics has been sorely impacted as a result. How ironic it may be when a lack of technological and economic growth fueled by climate concerns ends up bankrupting the economy for renewables and permaculture.
I'd trade 5 Apple watches for a functional Japanese watch-TV from the 80s. Perhaps I should listen to myself speak sometimes.
For the flex, as they say. Because Seiko figured out how to make a small, wrist-bound TV. It could only hold the screen (not speakers, or a headphone barrel, or even the antenna assembly), so that's what they put on the wrist and moved the rest away. Also, there's an aspect of 80s opulence at play with this. So they did it because they could using the best of what they had at the time.
My dad was a huge fan of Sony’s Watchman series of portable TVs. He had 2 or 3 different models. In the 1990s, I would steal them when I’d go on school trips in elementary school so I wouldn’t miss my TV shows. The limitation of antenna stuff made it less than ideal in a moving vehicle, but being able to watch Melrose Place on a bus in third grade instead of Homeward Bound or The Sandlot was pretty dope.
Which is all to say, very young filmgirl would have loved this shit.
Yah, in a general area I think it would be fine. The TV in my grandfather’s van in the early 1990s was great from what little I remember of it. More of an issue when you’re crossing state lines on a 6 or 8 hour bus trip
I've always wanted one of these. Sadly, the LCD has failed in the majority of surviving examples, I believe the liquid part of the liquid crystal "escapes" over time.
If you have an Apple Watch there's a new app called "WatchTube" that lets you watch YouTube on your watch, if you'd like to see if such a tiny video viewing experience is actually any good.
You have to admit Back in 1980s this was not only awesome but a must have gadget. Hard to visualise how awesome this before internet era. Completely futuristic. +10000
Just like in 1999 the Casio PRT-1GPJ, the first GPS watch. Quite useless and totally awesome. I had a friend who almost could not sleep until he finally owned this watch. Then he put it into a drawer and never looked at it again.
IMO the wristwatch was perfected for the average user in 1989 with the Casio F-91W. Ten dollars, ten year battery, does time and date to a reasonable accuracy, has an alarm, a stopwatch, and a light - for ten dollars. That value is insane.
I have a Mii band and I like it for the same reasons your describe. The battery lasts 20+ days between charging. It just has basic functions, like showing text messages, a stopwatch, and step counter. It doesn’t try to be a smart phone on your wrist, it’s just very simple and does its job well.
I would really like to own a GShock, but I just can't get over how small the digits are. I know I would be frustrated reading the time from a space that is maybe 1/15 of the watch face surface area.
I remember watching this cartoon called Kochikame as a kid. One episode features a this guy who carries around a portable TV, watching all his TV shows as he goes around. That blew my mind. Such a thing clearly couldn't exist, I thought back then, but just thinking about it made me giddy with excitement. Fast forward 13 years, and I carry such a device with me at all times. Its the stuff of fiction come materialized. Stories like this remind me to stay grateful for the amazing progress that has happened that sometimes goes unrecognized by us.
when I was in high school I had a casio watch that doubled as a TV remote control that was responsible for a lot of random power off/change channel messages to the TVs at school...
Thought this was kind of neat when I first saw it, but I wanted a Sony Watchman more. Never got one, though. I'm still bitter about Santa not bringing me on that Christmas ...
With today's technology, how might this translate into a functioning 1980s Dick Tracy Watch -- the upgraded version from the original "radio watch" which includes video communication as well.
"But that's just Facetime on your phone but on your wrist."
"What's wrong with current smart watches?"
You still need a smartphone on or near your person. Maybe sometimes I want to be available for contact without the rest of the dizzle-dazzle in a retrofuturistic manner [flip phones aside].
Seiko used to be groundbreaking for its time, one such example is Seiko UC-2000 that could run BASIC and connect to keyboard and thermal printer module.
"UKW" radio is the German term for FM radio (which is broadcast over "ultrashort" or very high frequency / VHF waves, "Ultrakurzwelle", thus UKW). I wonder where that came from in the article?
Also, I wonder where you could still use this thing after you paid ~500 $ for it. Are there any analog NTSC channels still broadcast over the air anywhere in the world?
> Are there any analog NTSC channels still broadcast over the air anywhere in the world?
Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and parts of Costa Rica are still using analog SD NTSC.
In El Salvador the delay was caused due to first proposing ATSC on the mid 2000s and then switching to ISDB in the mid 2010s for what I believe were 'political reasons'.
The first batch of TV sets sold were NTSC+ATSC. And only the newer ones are NTSC+ISDB. OTA digital TV has never been used by more than a couple of channels or for test transmissions.
I think we've leap frogged this technology though. There's still no analog shutdown date and HD content from the local TV stations is usually available in YouTube or Facebook live.
I can clearly remember reading about this watch in one of the "innovations of the 1900s"-books in the early 90s at my schools library. It was featured as the pinnacle of human technology and it sparked great imagination in the mind of me as a child when I read about it.
Funnily enough, at this time, "portable TVs" were bulky contraptions with mini CRT displays.
They could have a very popular consumer product if they had expanded this LCD to bigger dimensions (maybe, the size of a walkman, a very popular product at this time) and created a truly portable TV.
Not a bad Fermi estimate, but even in Japan they're paying more for housing and health care than they did in the 80s, I'd call it 150k. A sibling comment of yours did what's presumably a straight CPI conversion to ~130K, so this is kind of cheating, but napkin math is a good habit to keep fresh.
James Bond has always been a phantasy for chavvy working class men. James Bond is basically a chav who solves his problems with violence, likes women and booze, but at the same time can cosplay being a suave, classy guy who rich people will have to respect.
Basically fairy tales construction workers use as daydream fodder to distract them from their menial jobs.
Also if you go to vacation hotspots in Southern Europe (Spain, Portugal, etc.) you'll find these types of brute, tattooed English chavs dressing in whatever brands James Bond wore in the last movie, while getting drunk in the midday heat and yelling obscenities at their mates across the outdoor cafeteria.
True, but it's important to understand what type of men Japanese women are still interested in.
The number of Japanese men who'd wear a Seiko TV watch (or show whatever modern day equivalent signifier of inceldom) has grown significantly bigger than the number of Japanese men who display the traits that Japanese women would like to see in a partner.
If we're going to do a one sentence summary here, it's "Japanese men don't enter the dating world without a job, and if they don't get that after college it won't ever happen".
That's only one of the subcultures who can't get a date. I was rather talking about who do have a steady job, i.e. are "Salariman", but in nerdy careers, i.e. tech, accounting, back office, etc. and have given up, or never tried, to be physically attractive to potential mates. The types who have lots of disposable income and would roam the streets of Akihabara to buy manga and go to maid cafés, or drop by Yodobashi to get a Seiko TV watch.
That's not a small subculture in Japan, and Japanese women are absolutely repulsed by them.
Hold your arm so a watch strapped on top of your wrist would be facing toward your eyes for easy viewing of its display.
If you have a smartwatch, or any kind of watch, you do this many times a day.
Now hold your arm in that position for 30 or 60 minutes to watch an entire TV show. You can take a break during the commercials.
Enjoying that? Probably not.
With a [smart]watch, you only glance at it a bit here and there. You don't try to view it continuously.
It is interesting to see a very clever product idea that completely ignores human anatomy.