On the progress of mainkind...or at least video downloads

[selenay]

Last night, I was sitting at my computer watching some videos on YouTube to get myself ready to write a fic.

It occurred to me that, six years ago, that simply isn't a statement that I could have made and it got me to thinking about just how much progress has been made with Internet technology and computers.

When I first started getting into Stargate, it was mid-season 4 in the USA and I needed to catch up on the episodes to have some clue on what people were talking about. I was able to borrow seasons 1-3 on video from the library, but catching up with S4 was more tricky. At that time, I was on a 56K modem and broadband had barely been mentioned yet. It certainly wasn't something that was actually available to my area.

There was a download site where you could get Stargate episodes at that time. I had to use a download manager in case my connection dropped and it took me over two hours to download a 45MB .avi episode file. As you can imagine, the quality of the video wasn't great and could be viewed in a window larger than 4inch x 4inch without degrading unviewable. There were artefacts all over the picture and the sound and it was 'affectionately' known as squinty-vision. The idea of watching a video of that length streamed over the Internet? Pretty much impossible.

What I was watching last night was a much higher quality video file, it could be expanded to full screen without too much degredation and there were no sound artefacts. My 2MB broadband connection kept well ahead of the viewing speed, meaning that there were no random pauses as the download attempted to catch up. If I wanted a really good quality video, it would only take me a couple of hours with BiTorrent to download a 500MB file that's pretty much as good as analogue TV.

When you actually think about things in those terms, the way they've affected us, the changes in technology have been quite incredible over the last few years.

In completely unrelated news, paranoidangel42: it's lucky you don't listen to Radio 2's drive time. They were discussing how to cook and eat rabbits. Poor bunnies.

Comments

[mingmerciless.livejournal.com]

Heh. I was on the ADSL trials (my ISP asked if I wanted to take part "Do you have to ask?!") and found I could be anyone's new best mate by waving CD-Rs with VideoCD format episodes of Buffy and Angel about. It wasn't just the fast connection, it was also knowing how to use the archaic Usenet newsgroups. Now, pretty much anyone with a fast link can easily find and download whatever they want via Bittorrent...

[wimble.livejournal.com]

And there I was, at Hinkley with a 320 gig USB Hard Drive...

[mingmerciless.livejournal.com]

Quite. I can still recall wondering how on Earth I was going to fill up the massive 90Mb hard drive in my first PC!

[selenay]

It's nice not being the only geek in a conversation :-)

I am currently falling in love with my new 2GB flash drive, bought for £10. To think I thought it was cool when I could burn a CD with info, a whole 750MB of it! And had to carry multiple floppys in my combat pants pockets every time I went anywhere and they never held enough data. Now I have all this data in a thing the size of my thumb! Technology is wonderful :-)

[mingmerciless.livejournal.com]

It's nice not being the only geek in a conversation :-)

Seems pretty unlikely round here...

[paranoidangel]

Grr at LJ for losing this comment.

I wish I had 2meg broadband. I was forced to upgrade at 8meg when I moved, so although it's stupidly fast at 6am, it's really slow at 6pm.

In completely unrelated news, [info]paranoidangel42: it's lucky you don't listen to Radio 2's drive time. They were discussing how to cook and eat rabbits. Poor bunnies.

Definitely. Bunnies should certainly not be cooked at all, ever.

[selenay]

I was forced to upgrade at 8meg when I moved, so although it's stupidly fast at 6am, it's really slow at 6pm.

Ah. I think we're looking at 8MB when we change ISPs, but it's going to depend on what's offered in our area - we seem to be pretty late getting many things. I'm hoping that if we do get 8MB, we'll get stupidly fast all the time :-) To be honest, at this stage anything is better than randomly dropped connections all the time!

Bunnies should certainly not be cooked at all, ever.

While I'm happy to try many things, bunny stew isn't one of them.

[paranoidangel]

I'm hoping that if we do get 8MB, we'll get stupidly fast all the time :-)

That's what I was rather hoping as well.

[selenay]

*sigh* The joys of the Internet. BT Internet has been randomly dropping our connection, sometimes for hours at a time, which is highly annoying. So we're looking for a new ISP and I'm reasonably confident now that everything has been shunted off my old btinternet.com email account, so it's full steam ahead on that plan!

[drharrysullivan.livejournal.com]

That's not helpful. Although my sister has broadband with BT and they quite happily coped with her moving house and just moved her account. Whereas Pipex required me to cancel and set up a new account (and new accounts can only be 8meg, hence why I have it) and they took forever with it.

[spacefall.livejournal.com]

Hullo! First draft of Red Headed League wobblevision is up http://spacefall.livejournal.com/670400.html

friends-locked to just those of us who were playing along, so feel free to add captions etc before it goes live.

[selenay]

Hullo to you! I took a look and my first response is that it made me LOL even though I was there during filming :-) And was even filmed in it! Not sure whether I can add to the genius, but if I think of anything I'll let you know.

And you're a very talented artist - had a bit of a browse around some of your artwork. Very nice stuff. You've almost convinced me about Holmes/Watson :-) I may have to bobble down to the library for a raid tomorrow

[spacefall.livejournal.com]

Oh, raid the library, because the canon is almost as slashy as the fic. Then check out http://liquidfic.net/Holmes_Watson.html

[selenay]

*g* My raid-ten-minutes-before-they-closed jaunt today produced exactly one collection of Holmes stories. Which included the Red-Headed League. I stood there grinning inanely for a minute before making a dash for the counter.

[spacefall.livejournal.com]

MY WORK HERE IS DONE! ;D

[selenay]

:-p~~~~

[munchkinott.livejournal.com]

I remember d/l-ing the 18-20mb *.asf eps of SG-1 and HUGE 100mb *.avis of MacGyver and thinking 'this is it - the internet has peaked'.

Though I used to think it was miraculous that I could download a 5mb *.mp3 with Napster in HALF AN HOUR on dial-up. And using MSDOS command line to log on... And the notion of realtime chat with ICQ being novel and all 'wow, I'm talking to this person on the other side of the world! O.o'. And, if I couldn't get a usenet reader on my mail prog, my life was OVER.

Now I just wonder when the enchantment stopped and the cynical disillusionment set in. *sigh*

[selenay]

Yeah, downloading episodes just seemed like the biz at the time. I couldn't imagine it getting better because until then I'd had to rely on transcripts to get episodes that I'd missed. You had to actually find the download sites and they were usually a well-guarded secret, but when you got there it was just so cool to be able to grab any episode you wanted and keep up with the USA airings for once.

Lookit the teeny blurry people! I can almost see what they're doing! It it sounds like there are replicators around even in replicator-free episodes!

Oh, foolish child that I was :-)

I think today's post was inspired by the realisation of how cool what we've got now is. It's so easy to skip straight past the innovation and new tech we have and complain because it's not quite as cool as we'd hoped. I think stepping back to admire it sometimes is a good thing :-)

[munchkinott.livejournal.com]

I couldn't imagine it getting better because until then I'd had to rely on transcripts to get episodes that I'd missed.

Oh god, YES! I remember waiting for the links to come through on usenet. And the first transcript was always a bit naff. X-D

I remember discovering the fullscreen button on Win Media and shouting 'HOLY COMPRESSION CRYSTALS BATMAN!' - it was like trying to watch SG-1 with a full-on migraine, so I switched down to squinty size.

My disillusionment isn't so much with the innovation - I love it. I look at how far we've come in five years and never fail to be gobsmacked. What makes me sniffle for the future of the web is the way innovation comes along, thrives, grows, makes everyone happy and then a corporation come along and screws the golden goose. *sigh*

[selenay]

And the first transcript was always a bit naff. X-D

I used to know which people did the readable transcripts and wait for theirs rather than going for the first transcript, which was often by people who couldn't even get character names right!

it was like trying to watch SG-1 with a full-on migraine, so I switched down to squinty size.

Oh, god, yes I did this! Squinty was teeny and almost un-watchable at times, but at least it didn't give me headaches (too much).

makes everyone happy and then a corporation come along and screws the golden goose. *sigh*

*sigh* Yes, that is depressing. I know that people have to make a living, but it seems like the best innovations get swallowed up by the crappest, greediest companies. Grrr.