User:Moillet/Streaming television

Streaming television history
The first worldwide live-streaming event was a radio live broadcast of a baseball game between the Seattle Mariners and the New York Yankees streamed by ESPN SportsZone on September 5, 1995. It was the beginning of a new era. During the mid-2000s, the streaming media was based on UDP, whereas the basis of the majority of the Internet was HTTP and content delivery networks (CDNs). In 2007, HTTP-based adaptive streaming was introduced by Move Networks. This new technology would be a significant change for the industry. One year later the introduction of HTTP-based adaptive streaming, many companies such as Microsoft and Netflix developed their streaming technology. In 2009, Apple launched HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), and Adobe, in 2010, HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS). In addition, HTTP-based adaptive streaming was chosen for important streaming events such as Roland Garros, Wimbledon, Vancouver and London Olympic Games, and many others and on premium on-demand services (Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, etc.). The increase in streaming services required a new standardization, therefore in 2012, with the contributions of Apple, Netflix, Microsoft, and other companies, Dynamic Adaptive Streaming, known as MPEG-DASH. substituted HTTP.

Amazon Prime Video
Amazon Prime Video was launched in 2006 with a different name, Amazon Unbox. Amazon Prime Video is included by Amazon Prime, which is a service that includes free shipping of different types of goods. Amazon Prime Video is available in approximately 200 countries around the world. Amazon each year invests in the production of films and TV series.

Hulu
Hulu was created in 2007 and opened to the audience one year after its launch. Unlike other streaming platforms, it is only accessible in the United States due to international licensing restrictions. A particular feature of Hulu is that the platform streams TV shows only some days after their broadcast and they are accessible for a limited time. In the beginning, Hulu had a free and paid plan. The free plan was accessible only via computer and there was a limited amount of content for users, whereas the paid plan could be accessible via computers, mobile devices, and connected television, and the number of content was larger than the free plan. In 2019, Walt Disney became the major owner of Hulu.

Netflix
Netflix, founded by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph, is a media streaming and video rental in 1997. Two years later, Netflix was offering the audience the possibility of an online subscription service. Subscribers could select movies and TV shows on Netflix's website and receive the chosen titles via DVDs in prepaid return envelopes. In 2007, Netflix's subscribers could watch some movies and TV shows online, directly from their homes. In 2010, Netflix launched an only-streaming plan with unlimited streaming services without DVDs. Starting from the United States, the only-streaming plan reached several countries; by 2016 more than 190 countries could use this service.

YouTube
In 2005, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim bought the YouTube domain name and started to create the website; in May a beta site was launched. The video platform became popular among the audience thanks to a short video, called Lazy Sunday, uploaded by Saturday Nights Live in December 2005. The SNL's video was not broadcasted on TV, therefore people looked for it on Google by typing "SNL rap video,” “Lazy Sunday SNL,” or “Chronicles of Narnia SNL.” The first result of searches was a link video on YouTube, which was the beginning of sharing videos on YouTube. Because of its popularity, Youtube had some issues caused by its bandwidth expenses. In 2006, Google bought Youtube, and after some months the video platform was the second-largest engine search in the world.

Binge-watching
In the 90s, the conception and the practice of watching entire seasons in a short amount of time emerged with the introduction of the DVD box. Media marathoning consists in watching at least one season of a TV show in a week or less, watching three or more films from the same series in a week or less, or reading three or more books from the same series in a month or less. The term “binge-watching” arrived with streaming TV, more precisely, when Netflix launched its first original production, House of Cards, and started marketing this process of watching TV series episode after episode in 2013. COVID-19 gave another connotation to binge-watching, which was considered a negative activity. Watching TV shows during the lockdown became something normal and a sort of healing for people.