The Girl in the Window Television Dials and the Missing Knob

The television in The Girl in the Window looks like a code machine. It is not. There is no four-digit channel, no remote, and no “TV password” that matches a YouTube overlay. The CRT is a visual-match puzzle that pays out a plastic handle. That handle becomes the knife. Without the knife you never cut cheese, the cushion cross, or the wallpaper grid. This page is only the TV. Power setup sits in the walkthrough. The later projection on this same wall is the window padlock, a different lock.

What you need before you touch the dials

1. Power. Plug cable from the mouse hole (lit candle, then umbrella), electrical tape from the square-key cabinet door, floor cable under the TV joined and plugged in.
2. VHS tape. Two-drawer unit on the armchair wall. Insert and play. Watch the still. It shows the girl and, above her head, circles with lines at specific angles.
3. Missing dial. The panel on the TV has an empty socket. The physical knob sits in the three-drawer unit beside the front door. People search the CRT for ten minutes while the dial waits on wall 1. See the room map.

If the set will not turn on, you are missing tape or the plug, not a code. Items lists both.

How to read the VHS still

Pause on the image of the girl. Ignore the story for a minute — Mia can wait. Look at the circles with ticks or lines drawn near the top of the frame. Each circle is a dial. The line is the position that dial must point to on the real panel.

There are several knobs on the television once you seat the missing one. Rotate each until its indicator matches the still. This is a picture-to-object copy, the same habit as the plant silhouettes and the wallpaper letter. It does not randomize the way leaf counts do. Your still is your still; a video’s dial angles can still differ if the creator’s screenshot was from another angle, so copy the tape in your VCR.

When every dial agrees with the still, the panel yields the plastic handle. Combine it with the glass shard from the broken bottle to make the knife.

Common failures

• Turning dials before the tape plays. You have no picture to match. Play the VHS first.
• Hunting for a numeric code on the screen. The snow and the girl are not digits. Do not type them on the plant box or the safe.
• Leaving the missing knob in the door unit. The puzzle cannot complete with a hole in the panel.
• Mixing this with the window projection. Lights-off symbols on this wall come later and feed the padlock under the window, not the CRT. Two puzzles, one piece of furniture.

The tier list ranks TV dials in A: fair if you watched the tape, annoying if you skipped it. It is not an S-tier lock. The vampire and the curtain pipeline are worse.

What the handle is for

Plastic handle plus glass shard → knife. The knife cuts:

• Cheese (mouse bait)
• Armchair fabric (cross offering)
• Wallpaper by the front door (grid path for the oval key and indoor switch)

Skip the TV and the entire mid-game chain stalls. That is why this page exists as its own codes article instead of a footnote in the walkthrough.

Platform notes

On a phone the dial hotspots are small. Nudge, do not swipe the whole set. On Steam, slow the mouse; the knobs were drawn for a finger. Controls covers both. The 31 August 2026 PC port does not add a new television. Same CRT, bigger pixels.

Related reading

Stuck before power? Getting Started and the item list. Stuck after the handle? Return to the walkthrough part 2. Need the projection on this wall? That is window padlock, and it needs the glove and the outdoor lamp first.

Treat the TV as a photograph you have to rebuild in hardware. When the handle pops, you are done with this lock forever. The set can stay on. You will face it again only as a projection screen.