AnalogTV
CRT Television Simulator
£4.99 · In-App Purchases · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
New: play video from an SFTP or SMB server, an Audio Effect toggle for clean sound, a real 16:9 MAC/HD export, and Teletext weather in local units. Now requires iOS 17.
AnalogTV recreates the complete analogue television chain - broadcast camera tube, composite signal encoding, RF transmission, and CRT phosphor display - simulated from physical first principles. Not a vintage filter. Not a post-process effect. A working simulation of every stage of broadcast television, from the camera neck to the phosphor screen.
THE COMPLETE BROADCAST CHAIN. Not AI, Not a Filter, the Real Thing.
Every frame passes through the same stages as a real television signal. A camera tube mode: Image Orthicon, Plumbicon, Vidicon, or CCD, captures the scene with its characteristic lag, halation, and MTF response. The signal is composite-encoded to NTSC, PAL, or SECAM standards, then decoded through the same mathematics a real television receiver performs. A Metal GPU fragment shader renders each frame onto a simulated CRT phosphor display at 60 fps.
ANALOG CAM
AnalogCam is a second way to use the app: a point and shoot camera with the console hidden and nine stompbox effect pedals along the bottom. Tap a pedal to latch it, hold it for a momentary hit. They are live while you record, so what you play is what is captured.
EIGHT PHOSPHOR TYPES
P22 colour television. P31 oscilloscope green. P45 white sub-millisecond. P4 B&W television. P3 amber radar. P7 dual-persistence radar — white flash fading to yellow-green afterglow. P11 deep blue photographic. P24 cyan-green flying-spot. Each calibrated from manufacturer datasheets and IEEE literature. Each shifts the IIR decay constants, rendered colour, and shutdown spot tint independently.
SERVICE MENU
Access the hidden service menu to make adjustments a television engineer would use: RGB drive and cutoff, convergence, focus voltage, G2 screen voltage, purity, HV regulation, and degauss. Every control operates at the physics level, changing focus changes the modelled electron beam diameter, not a software blur.
TUBE AGEING AND SHUTDOWN
Cathode emission falls with use. The screen accumulates burn-in at sustained high-brightness areas. Shut the set down and watch the EHT bleed, beam defocus, and phosphor decay to darkness with optional HV arc sounds.
14 TEST PATTERNS
SMPTE and EIA colour bars, pluge, crosshatch, multiburst, zone plate, flat fields, and more. Every pattern is generated mathematically in real time.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
- Metal GPU rendering at 60 fps
- NTSC, PAL, and SECAM composite encoding and decoding
- Eight phosphor types from primary source measurements
- Four camera tube models with authentic lag and MTF physics
- 14 test patterns generated in real time
- Shadow mask magnetisation with 128×128 persistence texture
- IIR phosphor decay with per-channel time constants
- Aperture grille, shadow mask, and slot mask geometries
Also on Apple TV as AnalogTV for TV, a separate app with a Teletext interface built for the Siri Remote.
more For those who remember analogue tv this app will produce immediately recognisable results. The pictures were pretty bad by today’s digital standards but we tolerated all the distortions and thought our tvs were fantastic! Ghosting, comet tails, multipathing and impulse noise combine to produce very familiar results. Great app.
For those who remember analogue tv this app will produce immediately recognisable results. The pictures were pretty bad by today’s digital standards but we tolerated all the distortions and thought our tvs were fantastic! Ghosting, comet tails, multipathing and impulse noise combine to produce very familiar results. Great app.
This version requires iOS 17 or later (previously iOS 16.6), because of a new SSH library dependency.
If your device can't update, you're on iOS 16 or earlier and this update won't appear for you.
New: play video from an SFTP or SMB server
Play Stream URL now accepts sftp:// and smb:// addresses alongside the existing http and rtsp support, so you can play a file straight off a NAS or server reachable over SSH.
New: Audio Effect toggle
A new switch turns the full analog audio processing (bandwidth limit, hum, buzz, tape wow and flutter) on or off independently of the picture, for clean program audio when you want it.
Fixed: MAC, D2-MAC, MUSE and HD-MAC video exported through Convert Video was squeezed into a 4 by 3 frame instead of its real 16 by 9 shape. Now correct.
Fixed a bug where the Apollo Field-Sequential Colour and SIT camera modes lost their colour when exported through Convert Video.
Fixed: Teletext weather pages now show Fahrenheit and miles per hour for US viewers, instead of always using Celsius and km/h.
Plus a more accurate Image Orthicon camera halo effect and other small fixes.
2.9.4 8 Sept
Bypass Mode: a clean passthrough that shows any source, most usefully an NDI feed, with the whole simulated broadcast chain switched off.
Four new Ceefax-style weather Teletext pages: a condition-icon page, a 24-hour temperature chart, a precipitation bar chart, and a local map with city markers.
Fixed a bug where video recording could fail silently with no file and no error shown. A failed recording now tells you.
The audio test tone now only plays under actual colour bars, not every test card. Camera sources now model a real Plumbicon tube by default. Plus NDI stability fixes and a picture sharpness improvement for high-detail sources.
2.9.3 25 Aug
NTSC-A impulse-noise polarity fix
2.9.2 12 Aug
Decoder and CRT refinements
A mono decoder on a colour signal now shows the real cross-hatch from an unrejected subcarrier, instead of the clean picture the control never actually produced. CAUSAL IF no longer reads as on while doing nothing.
The HANOVER and DL ERR sliders (PAL comb artefacts) now survive the picture pipeline instead of being silently averaged away.
AnalogCam: a point-and-shoot mode with an effects pedal board
Nine stompbox pedals you can play while you shoot: Tune, V-Hold, Snow, Impulse, Scramble, Power, Degauss, Magnet and Ghost. Tap to latch, hold for momentary. The ones with a knob remember where you left them.
Videos now record sound, and record it at a much higher quality. Analogue noise is punishing for a video encoder, and the old setting was starving it, so snow and grain no longer break up into blocks.
Flipping between the front and rear cameras now plays a proper channel change: the picture drops into monochrome snow, the raster tears and rolls, and the colour comes back a moment after the picture.
A rebuilt CRT display
Phosphor persistence, halation, bloom, the shadow mask and the vignette now all work in light rather than on signal values, which is where a real tube does them. Trails fade the way phosphor fades, and a bright highlight dims its own core as it blooms instead of simply getting brighter.
Looks you have already saved are unaffected. Each one records the version of the simulator it was made against and is rendered that way.
NTSC-A: 405-line colour
Britain trialled colour on its 405-line system between 1955 and 1960 and never shipped it. Now you can watch it.
The Decoder control works properly
Choosing a decoder that does not match the signal now behaves like a receiver tuned to the wrong system: the colour beats against the picture and crawls, a set that cannot lock both rolls and tears, and a SECAM decoder kills the colour while the abandoned subcarrier cross-hatches the picture, because a colour killer removes the colour and not the carrier. PAL-M and PAL-60 lock cleanly to NTSC and differ only in colour, exactly as the real sets did.
Tape emulation is more accurate too. VHS records colour on a carrier below the picture, and those figures are now taken per television standard instead of from two rough groups. PAL, PAL-N, SECAM and NTSC-4.43 tape looks slightly different as a result.
Teletext
A real SAA5050-series character set, and nineteen international alphabets.
Saved Looks
Looks now keep a stable identity as they sync, so editing one on a Mac no longer makes an iPhone treat it as a brand new Look and keep both. If duplicates have already built up, Presets offers to merge them.
Also
FTP and stream URL video sources. The recording timer now shows the real elapsed time. Plus fixes to recording, preset syncing and vertical hold.
And there is now an Apple TV app, AnalogTV for TV, sold separately.
2.9.1 10 Aug
AnalogCam: a point-and-shoot mode with an effects pedal board
Nine stompbox pedals you can play while you shoot: Tune, V-Hold, Snow, Impulse, Scramble, Power, Degauss, Magnet and Ghost. Tap to latch, hold for momentary. The ones with a knob remember where you left them.
Videos now record sound, and record it at a much higher quality. Analogue noise is punishing for a video encoder, and the old setting was starving it, so snow and grain no longer break up into blocks.
Flipping between the front and rear cameras now plays a proper channel change: the picture drops into monochrome snow, the raster tears and rolls, and the colour comes back a moment after the picture.
A rebuilt CRT display
Phosphor persistence, halation, bloom, the shadow mask and the vignette now all work in light rather than on signal values, which is where a real tube does them. Trails fade the way phosphor fades, and a bright highlight dims its own core as it blooms instead of simply getting brighter.
Looks you have already saved are unaffected. Each one records the version of the simulator it was made against and is rendered that way.
NTSC-A: 405-line colour
Britain trialled colour on its 405-line system between 1955 and 1960 and never shipped it. Now you can watch it.
The Decoder control works properly
Choosing a decoder that does not match the signal now behaves like a receiver tuned to the wrong system: the colour beats against the picture and crawls, a set that cannot lock both rolls and tears, and a SECAM decoder kills the colour while the abandoned subcarrier cross-hatches the picture, because a colour killer removes the colour and not the carrier. PAL-M and PAL-60 lock cleanly to NTSC and differ only in colour, exactly as the real sets did.
Tape emulation is more accurate too. VHS records colour on a carrier below the picture, and those figures are now taken per television standard instead of from two rough groups. PAL, PAL-N, SECAM and NTSC-4.43 tape looks slightly different as a result.
Teletext
A real SAA5050-series character set, and nineteen international alphabets.
Saved Looks
Looks now keep a stable identity as they sync, so editing one on a Mac no longer makes an iPhone treat it as a brand new Look and keep both. If duplicates have already built up, Presets offers to merge them.
Also
FTP and stream URL video sources. The recording timer now shows the real elapsed time. Plus fixes to recording, preset syncing and vertical hold.
And there is now an Apple TV app, AnalogTV for TV, sold separately.
2.9 9 Aug
• Community Looks gallery: browse, search, and download presets shared by other users, and publish your own with one tap.
• Live streams & video URLs: pipe an HLS or MP4 stream straight through the analog pipeline and watch it the way it would've looked on the tube.
• iCloud sync: your saved Looks now follow you across your devices.
• New built-in game: Turbo Track, a Sprint-style overhead racer (very much beta still)
• External display output: send the clean, processed picture to a second screen or projector with none of the on-screen controls.
• New "Original" app icon to choose from.
• Stability and bug fixes, including a crash when playing the built-in space game on certain TV standards.
2.8 22 Jul
• Play live streams & video URLs - pipe any HLS or MP4 stream straight through the analog TV pipeline.
• Community preset gallery - browse, search, and download looks shared by others, or publish your own with "Add to Gallery."
• Smoother NDI over Wi‑Fi - a new output‑resolution control cuts bandwidth so network receivers stop stuttering.
• Fresh "Live Signal" app icon - now with a Black‑and‑White variant you can choose.
• AnalogCam Apollo looks - dial in "One Small Step" and "Moonwalk."
• More convincing CRT magnet - the beam swirl now behaves like a real, imperfect field.
Plus stability fixes and refinements throughout.
2.7 13 Jul
Signal & CRT Fidelity Improvements:
- Causal IIR IF filter, multi-octave fBm signal noise, chroma vertical blend + fBm edge wave.
- Chroma loss control; geometric/hue-preserving vcrEdgeWave.
Apollo & AnalogCam:
- Apollo lunar-TV looks in AnalogCam (B&W SSTV + colour FSC), named One Small Step / Moonwalk; FSC colour fix.
- Apollo modes now enable Ground Station NTSC Convert by default
Presets & sharing:
- Auto-generated machine-readable preset-schema.json.
- Preset look-file format spec + samples (groundwork for a community gallery).
2.6 5 Jul
What's new in 2.50
NASA Apollo television (new)
Television as it actually came back from space in 1968–72 — a complete, self-contained Apollo mode reconstructed entirely in the signal domain from the primary engineering record (NASA TN D-7476, NASA TN D-6723, and the RCA Ground-Commanded Television Assembly manual).
• Lunar SSTV - the lunar-surface monochrome camera: 320 lines, 10 fps progressive, ~500 kHz, with the real 409.6 kHz burst sync and a properly lockable serrated field-sync.
• Field-sequential colour - the command-module/Lunar Rover colour camera: colour from a 6-segment RGB wheel spinning at 9.99 rev/s in front of a single tube (no subcarrier), recombined on the ground, with the colour band-limited to the real ~2 MHz.
• Two real camera tubes - the Westinghouse SEC vidicon (sensitive, blooms, burns, with the fixed fiber-optic faceplate specks documented in TN D-7476) and the RCA SIT vidicon from the Rover (intensifier, burn-immune, cleaner, 600-line, 32 dB).
• RCA ground scan converter - the optical 10->30 fps re-scan that made the slow-scan picture broadcastable, with its contrast/brightness/resolution loss and the famous white spots - plus a raw/converted toggle.
• Earth–Moon distance - a distance slider that delays the live picture by the real one-way light-time (~1.28 s at the Moon) and, near lunar range, breaks into the impulsive FM-threshold "clicks" the 85-ft dishes produced below threshold (only Goldstone's 210-ft stayed above it). A "Send to the Moon" button jumps to mean distance.
Black-and-white standards fixed
• 405-line (System A) and 819-line now finally emit the correct broad field-sync pulse (CCIR Report 624-2, 1982).
• The 819-line standard is now correctly named "System E"
• 819-line horizontal sync width corrected to 2.5 µs.
D2-MAC is sharp again
D2-MAC now renders at full resolution, picture-identical to D-MAC. It had been sampled at half the picture rate by mistake; in reality only its sound/data is half-rate, not its picture (ETSI ETS 300 250).
MUSE / Hi-Vision
Static Hi-Vision scenes now reconstruct through NHK's reference-decoder filter (ITU-R BO.786) using true 4-field quincunx interleave, so still detail "focus-pumps" crisper (genuine super-resolution rather than a frame average) - while a motion detector keeps moving areas authentically soft.
Pay-TV & copy protection - broader and more accurate
• New: Discret 11 (Canal+) - the French terrestrial system's per-line horizontal delay, snapping to the real Canal+ sequence; sync untouched, so the picture stays locked and keeps its colour while tearing horizontally.
• New: Eurocrypt / D2-MAC - component cut-and-rotate on the MAC time slots (the first non-composite scrambler in the set).
• Nagravision (Syster) uses the real 32-line sliding-window shuffle (locally shredded, globally ordered) instead of a full-field scramble.
• Videocrypt cut-and-rotate snaps to the real 256-step grid.
• Macrovision pulse cycling is encoded into the signal with patent-verified geometry.
• Video inversion now decides per-field, as the real systems did.
Signal-derived audio
Intercarrier "buzz" now tracks picture brightness and sync energy - bright scenes buzz louder, just like a real set.
VCR
Dropouts are modelled as FM carrier loss with an authentic dropout compensator (previous-line substitution), toggleable.
More physics, fewer fudges
• Co-channel beat and fine-tuning derive from real frequency offsets.
• MAC/MUSE lines carry true duobinary/data-burst waveforms with the correct frame-sync words and clock run-in.
• Colour is band-limited before time-compression, cutting false-colour shimmer on fine detail.
• Portrait (rotated) camera input now band-limits along the scan line, matching landscape sharpness.
Bug fixes
• iOS clips no longer record silently — audio is taken from the app's output, not the microphone.
• iOS auto-hides the video transport overlay during playback, matching macOS.
• Many other little minor fixes
Find a bug? Use in-app feedback form.
2.5 20 Jun
We love feedback!
1) User 'Marker478' suggested adding Overscan, which we just did (check it out in the CRT section)
2) We've also added a feedback form to send anonymous (or not anonymous if you want a reply) feedback on bugs or feature requests
3) Fixed a very subtle bug to do with the magnet / degauss function which could cause a crash in rare circumstances
2.2 11 Jun
Fix Audio/Video sync problems under certain circumstances
Fix Video Export quality and stalling on very large videos
Fix Import presets file from earlier version of AnalogTV
Fix SECAM CPU-mode V-Hold sync issue
Fix Full-screen mode layout issues in certain circumstances
Resolve many small bugs, code quality issues and technical debt
2.11 4 Jun
Complete re-write of Video Export feature to squash many bugs and issues (like B&W export of colour)
Cleaned up excessive use of disk usage in some instances
Improved mechanical TV mode fidelity
Baird 30 should default to Vertical Scanning per original
2.1 28 May
"AnalogCam" mode where the app becomes a camera app (but still uses the full pipeline of the original).
Mechanical TV to simulate TV like it was in the 1920s before electronic TVs and CRTs
Added Letterboxing. So you can do 4:3, Fill, Letterbox. This helps with 16:9 and vertical videos
New source "Import from Files" which allows loading and playing .mkv, .mp4 .mov and other formats
Higher quality NDI input/output
Feature request by u/a55p1 - Video transport: full-screen auto-hide
Video transport is now also seekable
Tons of performance improvements and bug fixes
2.0 11 May
1) MASSIVE bug fixing exercise
2) PayTV scrambling and VCR copy protection is now also simulated and fully controllable
1.93 3 May
1. NDI® Input/Output - It's a $0.00 in-app purchase for now during soft launch. Get it now before the price goes up.
2. Tooltips to tell you what each control does - press and hold on any control to see what it does.
3. Colour Decoder Mismatch - What happens if you use an NTSC TV in Europe? Now you can see what would happen. Mismatch NTSC, PAL or SECAM in the Tuner menu
4. Presets - Remember last settings, create multiple presets, share them with others, load them from others
5. Full refactor of VCR simulation and improvements (e.g. mistracking)
6. SECAM Fire control (CPU Only)
7. Teletext: Allows any RSS feed to be the News Feed. Default to TechCrunch
8. Soviet KBH-49 TV Lens Simulation
9. Fujitsu MB88303 Title Generator - go to Camera Mode, then Camcorder section at the bottom
10. Delay Line controls for PAL
11. Many UI Improvements
12. Improved signal fidelity with more comprehensive test suite for edge cases
13. Tons of bug / crash fixes
And lots more to come soon!
1.9 29 Apr
RTMP Export! - Check out the Output Tab and click on the (?) for all the details and instructions
Added Flash/Light for Camera mode
Moved D-MAC/MUSE formats to GPU, much better performance now
Tons of bug fixes
Tons of small UI improvements (e.g. on iPhone you can scroll the toolbar sideways)
Lots more to come soon.
1.7 18 Apr
Tons of bug fixes, UI fixes, Full Screen mode +
D-MAC, D2-MAC, MUSE, and HD-MAC
Four new standards covering late-1980s/early-1990s satellite and HD broadcasting. D-MAC and D2-MAC were used by BSB and European DBS services;
MUSE was Japan's Hi-Vision HDTV standard; HD-MAC was the European HDTV proposal. All four render in 16:9 widescreen with accurate time-division
multiplexed encoding.
SECAM-L (System L)
The French terrestrial variant of SECAM used on UHF channels in France until analogue switch-off. Distinct from standard SECAM in two ways:
positive AM modulation (picture polarity inverted) and a wider 6 MHz luma bandwidth, which is now genuinely applied at the encode level — making
SECAM-L visibly sharper than SECAM even with all processing options at their defaults.
Newvicon Camera Tube
A new camera tube emulation based on the Matsushita Newvicon — a ZnSe/ZnCdTe target used in 1980s consumer camcorders. It produces the
characteristic comet-tail lag on bright moving objects, with earlier highlight compression and a more linear gamma response than the Vidicon.
And more to come soon...
1.6 17 Apr
Teletext
- Full Teletext system with 8 live pages: Index (P100), Live News Headlines (P150), Weather/Hourly/5-Day via WeatherKit (P400–402), Calendar (P500),
Now Playing via MusicKit (P700), System Info/clock (P900)
- Fastext colour-key navigation (red/green/yellow/blue) on both iOS overlay and macOS sidebar
- Level 1 character renderer with full G0 Latin charset, double-height rows, flashing text, mosaic graphics
New TV Standards
- NTSC-4.43 (NTSC signal at PAL subcarrier frequency — used in Middle East VCRs)
- PAL-60 (PAL colour at 60 Hz field rate — common on early LCD displays)
VHS Colour-Under Model
- Replaced the old approximation with a true FM luma / heterodyne colour-under model matching real VHS head circuitry
iOS Broadcast Extension
- ReplayKit Broadcast Upload Extension — feeds the rendered output into Zoom/Teams/FaceTime screen-share
Scope
- Full-field waveform monitor, vectorscope, and RGB parade
- Contextual Filter and Parade sub-pickers on iOS
- Non-modal floating scope window on macOS
Lunar Lander (new arcade game)
- Added to the games source alongside Pong, Space Invaders, Breakout, Snake, Asteroids, Missile Command, Centipede
Tons of bug fixes and UI improvements
More to come!
1.5 15 Apr
SECAM fidelity for CPU/GPU
SECAM CPU Mode Performance
Scope fixes
4:3 mode for camera (iPad)
1.4 11 Apr
Fix camera recording rotation and audio
Improve signal domain fidelity
Improve camera recording quality
Improve fidelity of power on/off physics
Improve fidelity of phosphor chemistry / light spectra
Performance and Code Quality improvements
1.3 9 Apr
Changes since v1.1
New Sources & Games
- 5 arcade games added: Centipede, Breakout, Missile Command, Space Invaders, Snake
- Pong with 2-player support, iOS touch controls, physics-accurate arena dimensions, audio, intro/game-over screens
VCR Tape Simulation
- Physics-accurate VCR tape processing Metal shader (luma/chroma dropout, noise, tracking errors)
- Transport controls — play, pause, fast-forward, rewind with physically-modelled picture distortion per mode
- VHold jump on pause (accurate tracking-loss simulation)
- VCR OSD — on-screen mode indicator injected into the composite signal before encoding (so it passes through the full TV pipeline)
- Format presets (VHS SP/LP/EP, Betamax, Video8) with degradation sliders
- VCR audio features
Audio Engine
- Full analog TV audio simulation (RF carrier, intercarrier buzz, pre-emphasis)
- Test tone picker: BBC 400 Hz, EBS dual-tone, SMPTE 1 kHz, and others
- Video audio passthrough when source is video library
- Degauss SFX with corrected PTC thermistor physics
- Silent-mode bypass; audio off by default
V-Hold (Vertical Hold)
- Physically-accurate V-Hold oscillator model (free-running frequency, sync pull-in, proportional capture range)
- Oscillator noise, VBI bar, improved pull-in behaviour
Signal & Standards
- Fixed Hanover bars (PAL subcarrier phase alternation artefact)
- VITS (Vertical Interval Test Signal) insertion
- Fixed BURST and BRT controls
Test Cards
- BBC Test Card F replaced with authentic BBC image asset
- Crosshatch rewritten as period-accurate broadcast pattern
CRT / Scanline Rendering
- Scanline mask switched from hard rectangular step to sinusoidal beam envelope — eliminates moiré harmonics on NTSC
- fwidth() anti-aliasing added — eliminates fundamental beat frequency moiré on PAL and all other standards
- Scanline density now uses p.activeLines (broadcast line count) instead of texture pixel height — fixes B&W sub-variants showing wrong density
- Magnet simulation: touch-driven Lorentz-force beam deflection, permanent shadow mask magnetisation, texture-based multi-site magnetisation
Camera
- Camera flip button moved from floating video overlay into the source/standard bar (always accessible)
- Camera emulation stage with Plumbicon/Vidicon/IO tube types
iOS
- iOS 15 compatibility — replaced iOS 17 requirement
- Pinch-to-zoom disabled during games
Code Quality
- 50+ new unit tests
1.2 7 Apr
This version requires iOS 17 or later (previously iOS 16.6), because of a new SSH library dependency.
If your device can't update, you're on iOS 16 or earlier and this update won't appear for you.
New: play video from an SFTP or SMB server
Play Stream URL now accepts sftp:// and smb:// addresses alongside the existing http and rtsp support, so you can play a file straight off a NAS or server reachable over SSH.
New: Audio Effect toggle
A new switch turns the full analog audio processing (bandwidth limit, hum, buzz, tape wow and flutter) on or off independently of the picture, for clean program audio when you want it.
Fixed: MAC, D2-MAC, MUSE and HD-MAC video exported through Convert Video was squeezed into a 4 by 3 frame instead of its real 16 by 9 shape. Now correct.
Fixed a bug where the Apollo Field-Sequential Colour and SIT camera modes lost their colour when exported through Convert Video.
Fixed: Teletext weather pages now show Fahrenheit and miles per hour for US viewers, instead of always using Celsius and km/h.
Plus a more accurate Image Orthicon camera halo effect and other small fixes.
more Version 2.9.4 8 Sept
Data Not Linked to You The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
Contact Info User Content