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When I first heard an American on the internet talk about Netflix mailing DVDs, I thought it was a joke. Kind of like if someone said TikTok existed in the 90s
by ClassyJacket 3y ago
When I first heard an American on the internet talk about Netflix mailing DVDs, I thought it was a joke.
Kind of like if someone said TikTok existed in the 90s and they used to mail VHS tapes of people's home recordings.
- jtuple 3y agoNetflix has been around since 1997. At that time, directly streaming movies to consumers was techincally impossible anywhere in the world. As a non-American, how were you watching movies in 1997? And yeah TikTok/etc didn't exist then. No one hard smartphones and the Internet was text/GIF only. That said, we used to have the America's Funniest Home Videos show. People mailed in VHS recordings of their kids/pets doing cute, funny, or cringe things. This aired on TV and people voted to pick a winner. People could win $10k-100k in prize money. So yeah, proto YT or whatever was a thing, just scaled to available tech at the time. EDIT: Just realized AFHV is still around, and will outlive Netflix DVDs. *That* certainly feels like a joke. How does a network television meme show still exist in 2023???
- ClassyJacket 3y agoI did not think they were streaming movies in 1997 and I did not say I thought they were streaming movies in 1997. I thought they simply did not exist until years later when they started streaming. This should have been obvious from what I said, I'm not a total moron.
- eCa 3y ago> directly streaming movies to consumers was techincally impossible anywhere in the world. Yeah, a 33.6 kb/s modem vs a station wagon hurtling down the highway with a dvd is a fair fight.
- pyuser583 3y agoNetflix was founded on August 29, 1997. In the Terminator franchise, that’s the day nuclear war destroys the world (“Judgement Day”). I wonder if that was coincidence.
- hbn 3y ago> As a non-American, how were you watching movies in 1997? Video stores?
- dooglius 3y agoThat actually sort of existed too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Funniest_Home_Videos?useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Funniest_Home_Vide...
- hnbad 3y agoIf you think that's odd, look into Nintendo's history. And for that matter, Amazon started just selling books.