WEBVTT - Media in the Stream 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.240 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:13.960 How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:17.119 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:20.079 I Heart Radio and I love all things tech and 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:24.720 ages ago in the Dark Times, our listener Susannah asked 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:28.000 if I might do an episode about streaming hardware. And 0:00:28.040 --> 0:00:30.840 I got all excited because I was ready to talk 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:34.600 about fishing bowls and wading boots and nets and stuff. 0:00:34.640 --> 0:00:39.559 And then then she explained that she meant streaming media hardware, 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:42.440 and specifically, she wanted to learn more about the various 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:45.880 devices you can purchase to stream Internet content to a television, 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:48.800 like a Roku or an Amazon fire stick, that kind 0:00:48.800 --> 0:00:51.760 of stuff. And you know, these days, there are tons 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:54.320 of different options you could choose from if you wanted 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:57.320 to do that. Plus there are plenty of televisions that 0:00:57.400 --> 0:01:00.080 have at least some of those capabilities built in to 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:02.800 them natively. But in this episode, we're going to do 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:05.960 a rundown on the history of the trend and how 0:01:06.000 --> 0:01:09.760 those various devices work from kind of a high level. Plus, 0:01:10.160 --> 0:01:14.240 what if anything really differentiates one device from another? Well, 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:17.440 to understand these devices it's actually a good idea for 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:20.319 us to step back a bit and talk about streaming 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:24.440 media in general. And that actually means that you guys 0:01:24.480 --> 0:01:27.520 got to step into the elevator with me. So come 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:30.640 on in, let's playing room, guys, come on, just you know, 0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:35.320 cramming here. Okay, Now that we're all in the elevator, 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:39.720 we know a couple of things. First, that darn closed 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:43.280 door button is just total garbage, is not connected to anything. 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:46.080 But we also know that our ears will now be 0:01:46.200 --> 0:02:05.520 treated to some lovely instrumental music. Listen. Soothing, isn't it? 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:09.799 And you've likely heard this symphonic masterpiece referred to as 0:02:10.320 --> 0:02:14.839 Musaic mu z a K. Well, that's a trademark name, 0:02:15.160 --> 0:02:18.080 and it's possible because of a guy named George Owen 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:22.040 Squire way back in the nineteen tents. See, Georgie was 0:02:22.080 --> 0:02:24.280 a heck of a guy. He attained the rank of 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:27.320 major general in the U. S. Military. He had a 0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:31.000 doctorate from Johns Hopkins University. So this dude was both 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:34.160 super smart and he believed in serving his country, which, 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:38.800 you know, Wow, hats off to you, Major General Squire anyway, 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:43.320 not content with you know, just being a decorated soldier 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:48.040 and holding a PhD. He was also an inventor. In 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:52.240 nineteen eleven, Squire was looking into a method of delivering audio, 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:55.480 both in the form of music and in speech, over 0:02:55.560 --> 0:03:00.440 electrical wires, and he called it wired radio, meaning instead 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:04.640 of broadcasting signals using an antenna, he could deliver audio 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:08.760 over physical electrical cables. Now, this was before the days 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:12.160 of consumer radio, and very few people had the equipment 0:03:12.240 --> 0:03:15.040 or know how to use a radio at all, so 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:18.000 Squire saw this as a way to deliver audio to 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:21.480 the home without the need for all that equipment and knowledge. 0:03:22.120 --> 0:03:25.480 Now that brief explanation makes it sound a lot like 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:29.519 the telephone, which had already been invented, but Squire made 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:34.120 some significant contributions to this technology. In nineteen eleven, he 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:38.520 patented a way to transmit high frequency signals across wires 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:43.240 that were intended for lower frequency transmission. The patent has 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:48.640 the name quote multiplex Telephony and Telegraphy end quote. Now 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:51.520 what this meant in practical terms is that Squire had 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:55.640 found a way to transmit quote a plurality of telephonic 0:03:55.720 --> 0:04:00.600 and telegraphic messages over a single telephone circuit end quote, 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:04.400 So one circuit could serve as a conduit for multiple 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:09.640 transmissions simultaneously, and this was done by encoding the audio 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:14.280 signals using different frequencies. So for signal one, you would 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:17.040 have one band of frequencies, for signal two you would 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:19.800 have a different band of frequencies, and because you had 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:25.640 these different bands, you could easily differentiate between different signals. 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:28.960 You would need an encoding device on one end and 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:32.200 a decoding device on the other end in order to 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:35.560 send and receive the proper signals, but the circuits wouldn't 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:37.800 have to do anything special at all. The circuits would 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:41.320 just be the pathway. You didn't have to do anything 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:44.600 special to them, so in many ways this wasn't that 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:49.440 different from actual radio broadcasts. A receiver is capable of 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:53.920 picking up a wide range of radio frequencies. Using a tuner, 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:57.479 you can select one frequency, or in actuality, it's a 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:02.080 narrow band of frequencies around a key frequency. Then you 0:05:02.080 --> 0:05:06.080 can pick up a single radio signal, and really it's 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:09.320 more like you're tuning out all the signals that are 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:12.360 not the one you are interested in, right. It's like 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:15.560 it's like making sure that you're ignoring all the noise 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:18.640 so that you get the signal. So, to use an analogy, 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:21.000 it's like if you went to a party where there 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:23.359 are a lot of people talking all at once, but 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:27.560 you're focusing on one specific person to hear what they're saying, 0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:29.800 and as a result, you're focusing on them and you're 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:33.080 ignoring everyone else. Well, Squire did the same thing for 0:05:33.120 --> 0:05:36.440 transmissions across an electrical wire. He was just using it 0:05:36.480 --> 0:05:40.839 with technology as opposed to your focus. Squire donated his 0:05:40.880 --> 0:05:44.920 patents to the American public because I mean, come on, 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:49.040 this guy, folks, this guy anyway, by the nineteen twenties, 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:52.000 he was looking to use his technology to send music 0:05:52.160 --> 0:05:56.080 to speakers directly. He was taken by the name Kodak. 0:05:56.400 --> 0:05:59.520 He thought that sounded really good and thought something similar 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:02.039 would serve as a good name for this service that 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:07.159 would deliver music to customers, and thus he chose Muzak. Now, 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:10.560 it took several years for the Musaic company to get 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:12.840 to the point where it could actually deliver music to 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:17.839 customers over electrical wires. Sadly, Major General Squire would pass 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:23.080 away before that day came. Meanwhile, radio had matured and 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:27.000 companies like our Cia had created consumer radio sets, which 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:30.479 meant there wasn't much point targeting the general public with 0:06:30.640 --> 0:06:33.760 this service because radio was already doing it, but it 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:37.599 did still make sense to offer it to businesses and restaurants, 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:40.120 you know, places that might not be able to pick 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:43.279 up a radio signal easily, but these are places that 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:46.320 still maybe wanted to make use of music to improve 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:50.120 the ambiance of the environment. And thus we got elevator 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:54.880 music and an early concept in streaming media. Now we're 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:59.880 gonna skip ahead to nineteen seventy two, so several dec 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:01.360 aids at this point. We can all get out of 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:04.600 the elevator now, by the way, So in nineteen seventy two, 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:08.160 there was a computer scientist an electrical engineer named Nasir 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:13.520 Ahmed who invented a process called discrete cosign transform or 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:17.520 d c T. Now that probably sounds really technical, and 0:07:17.680 --> 0:07:20.240 it is, but if we want to be super general 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:22.600 about it to kind of understand what was going on, 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:27.280 we can say that this is a method of representing something, 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:32.440 representing an image, for example, or an audio file, and 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:36.160 you represent it as the sum of various waves that 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:41.320 represent different magnitudes and frequencies, so you're mathematically describing something. 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:45.120 Now that representation has the benefit of taking up much 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:48.800 less data than the thing itself would if you were 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:51.640 to encode it directly. Now, if I were to use 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:55.200 a very general analogy, I would say that we would 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:59.000 imagine there's an artist who has created a painting on 0:07:59.200 --> 0:08:03.560 an a norm canvas, and it would be difficult, would 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:06.520 be a hassle, and it would be expensive to ship 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:10.440 this painted canvas because it's just big and bulky, and 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:12.600 it would be delicate, so it'd be hard to do. 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:17.320 So Instead, a messenger of some artistic ability shows up 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:21.480 and studies this painting and writes down a careful description 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:25.200 of that painting, everything from what the painting is, of 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:30.000 the types of materials used in the painting, the colors, everything. 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:34.640 They bring that description then to a destination. At the destination, 0:08:34.920 --> 0:08:38.800 another artist takes that description to recreate the original painting, 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:42.679 and it probably won't be a perfect representation of the original. 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:46.480 And in fact, compression technologies that rely on d c 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:50.520 T tend to be lossy formats. That means you lose 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:55.400 some data in the process of compression and decompression. So 0:08:55.440 --> 0:09:00.080 I think this tracks anyway. D c T was an 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:03.559 important factor in finding a way to compress a file 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:07.480 down to a more manageable size, and that's the underlying 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:10.920 technology that would make streaming possible in the early days 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:14.400 of the Internet. Okay, well skip ahead again another twenty 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:17.120 years or so. It's time to talk about a former 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:22.480 Microsoft executive named Rob Glazer who formed a new company 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:28.040 in nine called Progressive Networks. Glazier had made a fortune 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:31.600 over at Microsoft. He was part of Microsoft as it 0:09:31.679 --> 0:09:35.320 experienced explosive growth, and he rose in the ranks while 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:38.800 he was there, and he became a wealthy man because 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:43.840 of it. He also possesses very strong liberal views. He 0:09:43.920 --> 0:09:46.640 grew up with a very strong liberal point of view. 0:09:46.920 --> 0:09:50.240 So his original intent with Progressive Networks was to create 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:54.359 a media company that could spread progressive messaging and advocate 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:59.080 for progressive political policies. His team began developing technologies that 0:09:59.080 --> 0:10:02.840 would allow of this mission, and that included a downloadable 0:10:02.880 --> 0:10:05.160 media player that could act as a sort of plug 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:07.679 in for a web browser. And as it turned out, 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:11.120 when they would talk to investors, the investors were way 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:14.920 more interested in the underlying technology of the company than 0:10:15.000 --> 0:10:18.360 the message that Glasier was hoping to spread. Now, keep 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:22.600 in mind that in n the web itself was a 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:25.880 pretty new thing. The very first web page was created 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:29.720 in August nine, so the Web had not been around 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:32.559 for very long at all. The World Wide Web was growing, 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:37.040 but it was extremely primitive compared to what we have today. 0:10:37.320 --> 0:10:42.600 It also wasn't able to support rich dynamic material natively. 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:46.200 This is why a plug in would be needed, because 0:10:46.200 --> 0:10:51.680 the HTTP protocol couldn't support streaming on its own. Those 0:10:51.720 --> 0:10:54.520 were the days when browsing the Internet meant you had 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:57.440 to download half a dozen different plugins if you wanted 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:01.520 to experience everything that was being created, and simultaneously, you 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:05.080 would be opening up potential security vulnerabilities on your computer 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:07.880 because you had to download all these other things to 0:11:08.040 --> 0:11:13.240 make that connectivity possible and that that dynamic material possible. Anyway, 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:18.080 back to streaming, Progressive Networks created a suite of technologies 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:23.640 that collectively we're called real Audio all one word big 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:27.840 are big A. This included a proprietary streaming format and 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:30.800 a plug in player, and the concept was great because 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:33.040 it would allow you to listen to an audio file 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:36.680 while you were in the process of downloading that file, 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:38.800 so you didn't have to wait for the full file 0:11:38.880 --> 0:11:41.720 to download before you could start to listen. Sort of 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:44.560 similar to how images used to load in browsers, because 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:47.319 in the good old days, downloading an image meant you 0:11:47.320 --> 0:11:50.680 would watch as line by line of pixels appeared on 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:53.440 your screen until you got the finished picture. Well, this 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:56.920 was similar, except you were hearing audio that was recorded 0:11:56.960 --> 0:11:59.360 at a low bit rate, so it wasn't super high 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:02.280 quality do that was a limitation of the technology at 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:04.920 the time, and you could listen to it while that 0:12:05.000 --> 0:12:07.880 audio file was downloading to your machine. It was sort 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:11.560 of like laying down railroad tracks while there's a train 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:15.600 slowly catching up to you from behind. Blazer's team recognized 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:17.680 that this approach would let you do more than just 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:21.320 listen to, say, a music file as you downloaded it. 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:24.720 It would also let you stream audio from a broadcast 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:28.720 source across the Internet so that people could listen in live. 0:12:29.440 --> 0:12:32.120 It was like a live radio broadcast, but using the 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:35.120 Internet to carry the signal rather than the airwaves. So 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:37.240 really you could think of this as the next step 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:40.920 after using those electrical wires to carry multiple audio signals 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:47.040 like music did so. On September five, Progressive Networks partnered 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:51.480 with ESPN Sports Zone and they transmitted a baseball game. 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:54.880 It was the Seattle Mariners versus the New York Yankees, 0:12:55.280 --> 0:12:58.280 and for the first time, anyone interested in the game 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:02.440 who happened to be subscriber to ESPN Sports Zone and 0:13:02.480 --> 0:13:05.640 have a computer enabled with sound and an Internet connection, 0:13:06.160 --> 0:13:10.040 and this player could listen in on this audio transmission 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:12.880 on this real audio platform. It was a good game 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:15.400 to the Mariners led six to one at the top 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:17.920 of the sixth and then the Yankees managed to score 0:13:18.000 --> 0:13:21.480 four more runs, so the final game score was six 0:13:21.600 --> 0:13:25.559 five Mariners, which is not a bad debut for streaming audio, 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:28.560 might have been a tough blow to Yankees fans. It 0:13:28.720 --> 0:13:31.520 was a big pr success for Glazier's company, not to 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:34.120 mention for Glazier himself, since he was part owner of 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:39.000 the Mariners. However, the actual reach of this broadcast was 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:42.079 pretty modest. Only a few hundred people had the ability 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:45.040 to receive the streaming audio because they met all the 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:48.240 criteria that were required in order to do so. But 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:52.360 it marked the beginning of an era. That being said, 0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:55.640 it wasn't exactly off to the races for streaming media. 0:13:56.040 --> 0:13:59.920 Glazier's team had created the first platform capable of play 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:02.920 being live streamed audio on the Internet, but there wasn't 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:07.880 exactly an overabundance of opportunities to use that capability. The 0:14:07.920 --> 0:14:11.320 Internet in general and the Web in particular, we're still 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:16.080 pretty young, at least for the public use of those utilities. Moreover, 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:21.280 connectivity speeds weren't exactly at broadband levels. The vast majority 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:23.760 of Internet users in the United States were relying on 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:27.800 dial up modems that had hefty limitations on download speeds, 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:31.320 so it would take time for communications companies to develop 0:14:31.360 --> 0:14:35.000 and roll out broadband connectivity. Heck, you know, we're still 0:14:35.320 --> 0:14:38.680 seeing pretty slow rollout in some communities in the United States, 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:42.640 but that's a discussion for another day. Progressive Networks struck 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:47.760 up a deal in with Microsoft, and this agreement meant 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:51.000 that Microsoft would include a distribution of the Real Audio 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:54.840 player with Internet Explorer, and that gave Progressive Networks a 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:59.280 huge boost in adoption. Meanwhile, the company was hard at 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:02.720 work to create Real Video, which was essentially for streaming 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:06.880 video what Real Audio was for streaming audio. Real Video 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:11.320 would debut in around that same time. Bill Gates over 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:13.680 at Microsoft was beginning to think he made an error 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:17.680 in helping out Progressive Networks. Gates saw that streaming media 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:21.000 had the potential to be much bigger than it had 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:24.480 been in it was mostly viewed as a curiosity then, 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:27.800 and he felt that Microsoft really needed to own a 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:31.560 piece of that business, or being Microsoft, he probably felt 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:35.160 that it needed to own all of it. Initially, Microsoft 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:40.040 entered the industry by purchasing a competing streaming media company, 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:43.080 but then Glazer met with Gates and the two hashed 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:46.240 out a licensing deal that would embed real audio and 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:51.560 real video technology in Microsoft's Windows Media Player platform. Progressive 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:54.880 Networks would then change its name to Real Networks and 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:58.200 it would continue to butt heads against Microsoft, but that's 0:15:58.240 --> 0:16:01.160 outside the realm of our focus for this episode. Now, 0:16:01.160 --> 0:16:03.800 before I go on, let's take a quick break to 0:16:03.840 --> 0:16:08.120 thank our sponsor. Hiring the right person takes time, time 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:11.600 that you often don't have. Urgency can be your enemy 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:14.680 when it comes to finding candidates that are truly meant 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:17.880 for your business. That's why LinkedIn is the best place 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:20.600 to post your job. With LinkedIn, you can find the 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:24.440 right person quickly and easily. I like it because I 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:28.000 want businesses and job candidates to get matched up efficiently. 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:32.800 It's to everyone's benefit. 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Find the right person for 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:11.840 your business today. With LinkedIn jobs, you can pay what 0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:14.959 you want and get the first fifty dollars off. Just 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:20.160 visit LinkedIn dot com slash tech pod again, that's LinkedIn 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:23.800 dot com slash tech pod to get fifty dollars off 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:27.560 your first job post. Terms and conditions apply. All right, 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:31.359 let's get back to streaming media. Back in the nineteen nineties, 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:35.160 no one was really sure how the streaming media thing 0:17:35.240 --> 0:17:37.600 was going to play out. There was a real sense 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:40.639 that there would be some big battles brewing between the 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:44.680 entrenched old media, that being radio and television and this 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:49.760 upstart new media enabled by the Internet. There's a piece 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:54.359 and Wired titled Real Revolution, which obviously is largely about 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:58.320 progressive network slash real networks Rise, and it has a 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:01.960 very prescient vision of what would eventually turn into reality 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:04.560 in the form of sites like YouTube. Now I'm gonna 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:09.719 quote Robert Ride's article because it's really interesting how on 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:13.919 target he was, though it was about a decade early. 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:17.840 Ryan was talking about the possibilities that open up once 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:20.960 technology allows for the transmission of video so that you 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:23.840 can view it in a full sized window on a 0:18:23.880 --> 0:18:29.520 computer screen. And here's what he says him quote all 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:32.919 this could wreak havoc with the competitive dynamics of the 0:18:32.960 --> 0:18:36.959 TV industry, opening millions of living rooms to any hyperactive 0:18:37.040 --> 0:18:40.480 kid with a video camera, a computer and a phone line, 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:44.080 which may soon mean most kids in America. Or it 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:46.960 could give the likes of Murdoch and Ted Turner and 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:51.480 eight Lane Highway into the heartland of the traditionally democratized, 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:56.399 decentralized net or maybe do both end quote and you 0:18:56.440 --> 0:19:00.520 know what, bingo, he hit the nail on the head there, 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:05.000 because that's exactly what we've seen. YouTube created the opportunity 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:07.639 for regular folks to upload videos for the world to 0:19:07.720 --> 0:19:10.960 see and later to stream live video to the world 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:14.879 as well. Bigger media companies, the traditional ones, would also 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:18.920 take advantage of tech to offer streaming services from established 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:23.359 traditional media companies. And we've seen content made for cinemas 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:27.240 and broadcast or cable television repackaged for the Internet. But 0:19:27.320 --> 0:19:30.320 we've also seen a lot of projects made specifically for 0:19:30.400 --> 0:19:34.640 those streaming services themselves. So yeah, that was a great prediction. 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:38.960 Now let's shift gears a bit. So while real video 0:19:39.240 --> 0:19:44.960 was launching in another company was just getting started. That 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:48.560 company was Netflix, which when it started was all about 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:52.160 renting out DVDs to customers who would pay a monthly 0:19:52.240 --> 0:19:55.080 fee to watch as many DVDs as they liked, or 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:58.840 really as many as they could, depending on how much 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:01.240 time it took to ship a new DVD to the 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:05.160 customer and return old DVDs back to Netflix through the mail. 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:09.480 By two thousand, Netflix founder Read Hastings saw the potential 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:12.159 for streaming media to act as a new way to 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:15.760 deliver this type of service to customers. He was also 0:20:15.840 --> 0:20:20.280 in fierce competition with Blockbuster, which was still a thing 0:20:20.840 --> 0:20:25.960 back then. Initially, Hastings approached Blockbuster with the opportunity of 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:30.000 a partnership in which Netflix would become the streaming component 0:20:30.320 --> 0:20:34.520 for the company Blockbuster, but that deal didn't go anywhere. 0:20:35.119 --> 0:20:38.120 And that makes sense because back in two thousand when 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:42.360 Hastings was meeting with Blockbuster, broadband connectivity wasn't really a 0:20:42.440 --> 0:20:46.160 thing yet. Most customers wouldn't be able to take advantage 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:49.560 of a streaming service, or if they did, it would 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:51.560 have to be at such a compression rate that the 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:54.280 image and sound would be awful, or the size of 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:58.359 a postage stamp, so it didn't make sense at the time. 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:01.400 It would be like watching everything on a super crappy 0:21:01.440 --> 0:21:04.760 bootleg VHS tape, and it would take several years for 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:07.520 the technology to evolve to the point that it would 0:21:07.520 --> 0:21:10.520 work for the average customer, which is why Netflix wouldn't 0:21:10.560 --> 0:21:14.199 introduce its streaming service or even announce it until two 0:21:14.280 --> 0:21:17.440 thousand seven. I'll get to that in a little bit, 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:21.240 But in the fall of two thousand six, Steve Jobs 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:24.399 revealed at an Apple event that the company was making 0:21:24.440 --> 0:21:28.119 an Apple product that would bring content offered through the 0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:33.399 Apple iTunes store to consumer televisions. The original concept was 0:21:33.440 --> 0:21:36.960 a box that would sink with an iTunes customers computer 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:40.440 so that the customer could send content that they had 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:44.080 rented or purchased on the iTunes store on their computer 0:21:44.640 --> 0:21:48.080 to this box via standard eight oh two eleven WiFi, 0:21:48.520 --> 0:21:51.800 So you would send it via WiFi to this box, 0:21:51.840 --> 0:21:54.639 and the box would then push this content to a 0:21:54.680 --> 0:21:58.240 television through an h d M I cable or through 0:21:58.320 --> 0:22:02.280 component video cables d IS remember component video, and then 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:06.439 it also supported both analog and digital audio outputs, so 0:22:06.520 --> 0:22:09.680 this box was sort of a middleman between a computer 0:22:09.840 --> 0:22:12.960 and the television, and Jobs called it i t V 0:22:13.240 --> 0:22:16.000 in the demo, but when it launched the following year, 0:22:16.280 --> 0:22:19.600 the company would simply call it Apple TV, and its 0:22:19.640 --> 0:22:22.800 initial form, the Apple TV required a networked computer to 0:22:22.840 --> 0:22:25.439 supply the content, so this was not a box that 0:22:25.520 --> 0:22:27.679 you could just hook up to the Internet at large 0:22:28.040 --> 0:22:31.200 and pull down video or music using a user interface 0:22:31.280 --> 0:22:35.480 with the box itself. There was this intermediary step with 0:22:35.560 --> 0:22:38.359 the networked computer, but this was to try and solve 0:22:38.359 --> 0:22:40.520 a problem that a lot of people had, which was 0:22:40.560 --> 0:22:43.560 that for a lot of folks, they weren't sure how 0:22:43.640 --> 0:22:47.439 to connect their computers to their televisions so that they 0:22:47.480 --> 0:22:52.479 could watch Internet streaming content on their TVs. There were 0:22:52.520 --> 0:22:55.800 ways to do it, but it wasn't exactly easy for 0:22:55.880 --> 0:23:02.600 the average consumer. There involved a lot of different uh hardware, cables, 0:23:02.640 --> 0:23:06.480 and different software packages that you needed to do. You 0:23:06.480 --> 0:23:09.160 have to worry about different resolutions. It ended up being 0:23:09.240 --> 0:23:13.760 something that the average person just wasn't comfortable handling. So 0:23:14.280 --> 0:23:18.440 this was Apple's solution to that problem. But in addition 0:23:18.480 --> 0:23:22.840 to this intermediary step, the media services that Apple supported 0:23:22.880 --> 0:23:27.120 did not include stuff like Netflix or other online media, 0:23:27.280 --> 0:23:30.480 and most of the content on iTunes had been optimized 0:23:30.520 --> 0:23:34.159 for much smaller screens than your average television, so the 0:23:34.200 --> 0:23:38.000 resulting video in those early days of Apple TV wasn't 0:23:38.040 --> 0:23:41.159 super high quality. Apple would make adjustments to how it 0:23:41.200 --> 0:23:44.000 approached the Apple TV over the following years, and it 0:23:44.080 --> 0:23:47.920 includes some online media connectivity and remove the requirement to 0:23:48.000 --> 0:23:50.760 sync with a networked computer, which made it more of 0:23:50.800 --> 0:23:54.520 a true streaming box over time. But in that early 0:23:54.600 --> 0:23:58.639 incarnation you probably wouldn't call it a streaming box. It 0:23:58.720 --> 0:24:02.639 was more like a sinking slash downloading box. Also in 0:24:02.680 --> 0:24:07.320 two thousand and six, Amazon announced a service called Amazon Unboxed. Now. 0:24:07.359 --> 0:24:11.159 This was Amazon's digital video download service, and again This 0:24:11.240 --> 0:24:14.919 was all about downloading video content, not streaming it, but 0:24:15.000 --> 0:24:17.840 it would serve as the foothold for Amazon to evolve 0:24:17.880 --> 0:24:21.200 this service later and to what we now call Prime Video. 0:24:21.359 --> 0:24:24.439 I'll get back to that later in this episode. So 0:24:24.480 --> 0:24:28.600 while Netflix was emerging from struggling business into a successful 0:24:28.600 --> 0:24:32.480 competitor with Blockbuster, there was another guy named Anthony Wood 0:24:32.680 --> 0:24:35.920 who was the founder of a DVR company called Replay TV, 0:24:36.359 --> 0:24:41.120 who created his sixth company. He named it Roku, which 0:24:41.160 --> 0:24:44.119 is Japanese for six. Roku was in the business of 0:24:44.200 --> 0:24:48.800 making streaming media products like digital radios and digital signage. 0:24:49.320 --> 0:24:52.280 He got into some early discussions with Read Hastings about 0:24:52.280 --> 0:24:55.560 developing a streaming video set top box for the company, 0:24:56.520 --> 0:25:00.959 but Hastings wasn't really sure about it. Eventually, Anthony would 0:25:01.080 --> 0:25:03.840