AnalogTV: A First-Principles Physics Simulation of the Entire Analog Television Broadcast Chain on iOS/macOS

AnalogTV is a deep, GPU-accelerated simulation that models every major stage of classic analog television broadcasting — from the camera tube all the way to the glowing CRT phosphor screen — using real physical principles rather than simple visual filters.

• Camera tube physics: lag, bloom, burn-in, and target material behaviors for multiple tube types
• Composite video encoding/decoding: authentic NTSC/PAL/SECAM chroma/luma separation with dot crawl, cross-color artifacts, and ringing
• RF transmission: ghosts, flutter, multipath interference, and noise
• VCR mechanics: tape generation loss, dropouts, tracking errors across 8 different formats
• CRT display: phosphor persistence and decay (including rare types like P7 and P11), shadow mask effects, convergence/purity errors, degauss, geometric distortion, warmup/shutdown sequences, and even raster collapse

Users can tweak service-menu level controls, monitor signals with built-in waveform and vectorscope tools, and experiment with historical test patterns (SMPTE bars, BBC Test Card F, RCA Indian Head, and many more from the 1930s–1990s). For extra fun, the app routes 8 classic arcade games (Pong, Space Invaders, Breakout, Asteroids, etc.) through the complete analog chain so you can experience them with genuine 1970s–80s TV imperfections.

Perfect for retro computing enthusiasts, broadcast engineers, hardware historians, and anyone who misses the warm glow, static, and unique imperfections of CRT televisions and VHS tapes.

Check out all the gory details here: https://analogtv.net

I'd love feedback from the Hackaday community; especially from those who have worked with real analog gear or built similar simulations.