A tv loop

That’s 23 hours and 59 minutes long. Say it runs in a storefront window. Someone who passed by every day around the same time will eventually see the whole loop, but in reverse. This would take nearly 4 years.

1 minute difference though, what would the passerby experience? “Oh it seems like they keep playing the same show” then turns into “oh it’s the whole episode on loop”. If playing like standard 30 minute sitcoms, the program would change every month or so. Would the passerby notice it’s slowly running in reverse? Or would they just think they’re always playing the same episode on loop?

What if the loop was 23:59:59, or just one second short of a day?

It would take like 236 years to loop completely. What would the effect on the passerby be? They’d see the same scene over and over. It’d be noticeable. But they would also notice it slowly changing maybe? A full 30 minute episode would take about 5 years.

I think the ideal is an offset of five seconds. That would take the passerby a year to see a full episode. Imagine how they would feel when the programmes switched after a year!

The passerby would be variable on their time passing by as well, so the timing would jump around some but still be notice that it’s running backwards. Like one day they pass by at 8:07, another day it’s 8:09, etc.

I like to think of the passerby noticing this and thinking about it after awhile. Stopping for a few minutes, while the program continues through parts they’ve already seen. Maybe coming back another time of day and seeing a completely different programme. Maybe they pass by on the way home and experience the same thing but with a different programme.