November 13, 2019 • 43 mins
Over the last decade, we've seen a gradual shift from hard copy media to streaming media. In this episode, we look at the history and tech behind devices designed to stream entertainment.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
I Heart Radio and I love all things tech and
ages ago in the Dark Times, our listener Susannah asked
(00:24):
if I might do an episode about streaming hardware. And
I got all excited because I was ready to talk
about fishing bowls and wading boots and nets and stuff.
And then then she explained that she meant streaming media hardware,
and specifically, she wanted to learn more about the various
devices you can purchase to stream Internet content to a television,
(00:45):
like a Roku or an Amazon fire stick, that kind
of stuff. And you know, these days, there are tons
of different options you could choose from if you wanted
to do that. Plus there are plenty of televisions that
have at least some of those capabilities built in to
them natively. But in this episode, we're going to do
a rundown on the history of the trend and how
(01:06):
those various devices work from kind of a high level. Plus,
what if anything really differentiates one device from another? Well,
to understand these devices it's actually a good idea for
us to step back a bit and talk about streaming
media in general. And that actually means that you guys
got to step into the elevator with me. So come
(01:27):
on in, let's playing room, guys, come on, just you know,
cramming here. Okay, Now that we're all in the elevator,
we know a couple of things. First, that darn closed
door button is just total garbage, is not connected to anything.
But we also know that our ears will now be
treated to some lovely instrumental music. Listen. Soothing, isn't it?
(02:06):
And you've likely heard this symphonic masterpiece referred to as
Musaic mu z a K. Well, that's a trademark name,
and it's possible because of a guy named George Owen
Squire way back in the nineteen tents. See, Georgie was
a heck of a guy. He attained the rank of
major general in the U. S. Military. He had a
(02:27):
doctorate from Johns Hopkins University. So this dude was both
super smart and he believed in serving his country, which,
you know, Wow, hats off to you, Major General Squire anyway,
not content with you know, just being a decorated soldier
and holding a PhD. He was also an inventor. In
(02:48):
nineteen eleven, Squire was looking into a method of delivering audio,
both in the form of music and in speech, over
electrical wires, and he called it wired radio, meaning instead
of broadcasting signals using an antenna, he could deliver audio
over physical electrical cables. Now, this was before the days
(03:08):
of consumer radio, and very few people had the equipment
or know how to use a radio at all, so
Squire saw this as a way to deliver audio to
the home without the need for all that equipment and knowledge.
Now that brief explanation makes it sound a lot like
the telephone, which had already been invented, but Squire made
(03:29):
some significant contributions to this technology. In nineteen eleven, he
patented a way to transmit high frequency signals across wires
that were intended for lower frequency transmission. The patent has
the name quote multiplex Telephony and Telegraphy end quote. Now
what this meant in practical terms is that Squire had
(03:51):
found a way to transmit quote a plurality of telephonic
and telegraphic messages over a single telephone circuit end quote,
So one circuit could serve as a conduit for multiple
transmissions simultaneously, and this was done by encoding the audio
signals using different frequencies. So for signal one, you would
(04:14):
have one band of frequencies, for signal two you would
have a different band of frequencies, and because you had
these different bands, you could easily differentiate between different signals.
You would need an encoding device on one end and
a decoding device on the other end in order to
send and receive the proper signals, but the circuits wouldn't
(04:35):
have to do anything special at all. The circuits would
just be the pathway. You didn't have to do anything
special to them, so in many ways this wasn't that
different from actual radio broadcasts. A receiver is capable of
picking up a wide range of radio frequencies. Using a tuner,
you can select one frequency, or in actuality, it's a
(04:57):
narrow band of frequencies around a key frequency. Then you
can pick up a single radio signal, and really it's
more like you're tuning out all the signals that are
not the one you are interested in, right. It's like
it's like making sure that you're ignoring all the noise
so that you get the signal. So, to use an analogy,
(05:18):
it's like if you went to a party where there
are a lot of people talking all at once, but
you're focusing on one specific person to hear what they're saying,
and as a result, you're focusing on them and you're
ignoring everyone else. Well, Squire did the same thing for
transmissions across an electrical wire. He was just using it
with technology as opposed to your focus. Squire donated his
(05:40):
patents to the American public because I mean, come on,
this guy, folks, this guy anyway, by the nineteen twenties,
he was looking to use his technology to send music
to speakers directly. He was taken by the name Kodak.
He thought that sounded really good and thought something similar
would serve as a good name for this service that
(06:02):
would deliver music to customers, and thus he chose Muzak. Now,
it took several years for the Musaic company to get
to the point where it could actually deliver music to
customers over electrical wires. Sadly, Major General Squire would pass
away before that day came. Meanwhile, radio had matured and
(06:23):
companies like our Cia had created consumer radio sets, which
meant there wasn't much point targeting the general public with
this service because radio was already doing it, but it
did still make sense to offer it to businesses and restaurants,
you know, places that might not be able to pick
up a radio signal easily, but these are places that
(06:43):
still maybe wanted to make use of music to improve
the ambiance of the environment. And thus we got elevator
music and an early concept in streaming media. Now we're
gonna skip ahead to nineteen seventy two, so several dec
aids at this point. We can all get out of
the elevator now, by the way, So in nineteen seventy two,
(07:04):
there was a computer scientist an electrical engineer named Nasir
Ahmed who invented a process called discrete cosign transform or
d c T. Now that probably sounds really technical, and
it is, but if we want to be super general
about it to kind of understand what was going on,
we can say that this is a method of representing something,
(07:27):
representing an image, for example, or an audio file, and
you represent it as the sum of various waves that
represent different magnitudes and frequencies, so you're mathematically describing something.
Now that representation has the benefit of taking up much
less data than the thing itself would if you were
(07:48):
to encode it directly. Now, if I were to use
a very general analogy, I would say that we would
imagine there's an artist who has created a painting on
an a norm canvas, and it would be difficult, would
be a hassle, and it would be expensive to ship
this painted canvas because it's just big and bulky, and
(08:10):
it would be delicate, so it'd be hard to do.
So Instead, a messenger of some artistic ability shows up
and studies this painting and writes down a careful description
of that painting, everything from what the painting is, of
the types of materials used in the painting, the colors, everything.
They bring that description then to a destination. At the destination,
(08:34):
another artist takes that description to recreate the original painting,
and it probably won't be a perfect representation of the original.
And in fact, compression technologies that rely on d c
T tend to be lossy formats. That means you lose
some data in the process of compression and decompression. So
(08:55):
I think this tracks anyway. D c T was an
important factor in finding a way to compress a file
down to a more manageable size, and that's the underlying
technology that would make streaming possible in the early days
of the Internet. Okay, well skip ahead again another twenty
years or so. It's time to talk about a former
(09:17):
Microsoft executive named Rob Glazer who formed a new company
in nine called Progressive Networks. Glazier had made a fortune
over at Microsoft. He was part of Microsoft as it
experienced explosive growth, and he rose in the ranks while
he was there, and he became a wealthy man because
(09:38):
of it. He also possesses very strong liberal views. He
grew up with a very strong liberal point of view.
So his original intent with Progressive Networks was to create
a media company that could spread progressive messaging and advocate
for progressive political policies. His team began developing technologies that
(09:59):
would allow of this mission, and that included a downloadable
media player that could act as a sort of plug
in for a web browser. And as it turned out,
when they would talk to investors, the investors were way
more interested in the underlying technology of the company than
the message that Glasier was hoping to spread. Now, keep
in mind that in n the web itself was a
(10:22):
pretty new thing. The very first web page was created
in August nine, so the Web had not been around
for very long at all. The World Wide Web was growing,
but it was extremely primitive compared to what we have today.
It also wasn't able to support rich dynamic material natively.
(10:42):
This is why a plug in would be needed, because
the HTTP protocol couldn't support streaming on its own. Those
were the days when browsing the Internet meant you had
to download half a dozen different plugins if you wanted
to experience everything that was being created, and simultaneously, you
would be opening up potential security vulnerabilities on your computer
(11:05):
because you had to download all these other things to
make that connectivity possible and that that dynamic material possible. Anyway,
back to streaming, Progressive Networks created a suite of technologies
that collectively we're called real Audio all one word big
are big A. This included a proprietary streaming format and
(11:27):
a plug in player, and the concept was great because
it would allow you to listen to an audio file
while you were in the process of downloading that file,
so you didn't have to wait for the full file
to download before you could start to listen. Sort of
similar to how images used to load in browsers, because
in the good old days, downloading an image meant you
would watch as line by line of pixels appeared on
(11:50):
your screen until you got the finished picture. Well, this
was similar, except you were hearing audio that was recorded
at a low bit rate, so it wasn't super high
quality do that was a limitation of the technology at
the time, and you could listen to it while that
audio file was downloading to your machine. It was sort
of like laying down railroad tracks while there's a train
(12:11):
slowly catching up to you from behind. Blazer's team recognized
that this approach would let you do more than just
listen to, say, a music file as you downloaded it.
It would also let you stream audio from a broadcast
source across the Internet so that people could listen in live.
It was like a live radio broadcast, but using the
(12:32):
Internet to carry the signal rather than the airwaves. So
really you could think of this as the next step
after using those electrical wires to carry multiple audio signals
like music did so. On September five, Progressive Networks partnered
with ESPN Sports Zone and they transmitted a baseball game.
It was the Seattle Mariners versus the New York Yankees,
(12:55):
and for the first time, anyone interested in the game
who happened to be subscriber to ESPN Sports Zone and
have a computer enabled with sound and an Internet connection,
and this player could listen in on this audio transmission
on this real audio platform. It was a good game
to the Mariners led six to one at the top
(13:15):
of the sixth and then the Yankees managed to score
four more runs, so the final game score was six
five Mariners, which is not a bad debut for streaming audio,
might have been a tough blow to Yankees fans. It
was a big pr success for Glazier's company, not to
mention for Glazier himself, since he was part owner of
the Mariners. However, the actual reach of this broadcast was
(13:39):
pretty modest. Only a few hundred people had the ability
to receive the streaming audio because they met all the
criteria that were required in order to do so. But
it marked the beginning of an era. That being said,
it wasn't exactly off to the races for streaming media.
Glazier's team had created the first platform capable of play
(14:00):
being live streamed audio on the Internet, but there wasn't
exactly an overabundance of opportunities to use that capability. The
Internet in general and the Web in particular, we're still
pretty young, at least for the public use of those utilities. Moreover,
connectivity speeds weren't exactly at broadband levels. The vast majority
(14:21):
of Internet users in the United States were relying on
dial up modems that had hefty limitations on download speeds,
so it would take time for communications companies to develop
and roll out broadband connectivity. Heck, you know, we're still
seeing pretty slow rollout in some communities in the United States,
but that's a discussion for another day. Progressive Networks struck
(14:42):
up a deal in with Microsoft, and this agreement meant
that Microsoft would include a distribution of the Real Audio
player with Internet Explorer, and that gave Progressive Networks a
huge boost in adoption. Meanwhile, the company was hard at
work to create Real Video, which was essentially for streaming
(15:02):
video what Real Audio was for streaming audio. Real Video
would debut in around that same time. Bill Gates over
at Microsoft was beginning to think he made an error
in helping out Progressive Networks. Gates saw that streaming media
had the potential to be much bigger than it had
been in it was mostly viewed as a curiosity then,
(15:25):
and he felt that Microsoft really needed to own a
piece of that business, or being Microsoft, he probably felt
that it needed to own all of it. Initially, Microsoft
entered the industry by purchasing a competing streaming media company,
but then Glazer met with Gates and the two hashed
out a licensing deal that would embed real audio and
(15:46):
real video technology in Microsoft's Windows Media Player platform. Progressive
Networks would then change its name to Real Networks and
it would continue to butt heads against Microsoft, but that's
outside the realm of our focus for this episode. Now,
before I go on, let's take a quick break to
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let's get back to streaming media. Back in the nineteen nineties,
(17:32):
no one was really sure how the streaming media thing
was going to play out. There was a real sense
that there would be some big battles brewing between the
entrenched old media, that being radio and television and this
upstart new media enabled by the Internet. There's a piece
and Wired titled Real Revolution, which obviously is largely about
(17:54):
progressive network slash real networks Rise, and it has a
very prescient vision of what would eventually turn into reality
in the form of sites like YouTube. Now I'm gonna
quote Robert Ride's article because it's really interesting how on
target he was, though it was about a decade early.
(18:14):
Ryan was talking about the possibilities that open up once
technology allows for the transmission of video so that you
can view it in a full sized window on a
computer screen. And here's what he says him quote all
this could wreak havoc with the competitive dynamics of the
TV industry, opening millions of living rooms to any hyperactive
(18:37):
kid with a video camera, a computer and a phone line,
which may soon mean most kids in America. Or it
could give the likes of Murdoch and Ted Turner and
eight Lane Highway into the heartland of the traditionally democratized,
decentralized net or maybe do both end quote and you
know what, bingo, he hit the nail on the head there,
(19:00):
because that's exactly what we've seen. YouTube created the opportunity
for regular folks to upload videos for the world to
see and later to stream live video to the world
as well. Bigger media companies, the traditional ones, would also
take advantage of tech to offer streaming services from established
traditional media companies. And we've seen content made for cinemas
(19:23):
and broadcast or cable television repackaged for the Internet. But
we've also seen a lot of projects made specifically for
those streaming services themselves. So yeah, that was a great prediction.
Now let's shift gears a bit. So while real video
was launching in another company was just getting started. That
(19:45):
company was Netflix, which when it started was all about
renting out DVDs to customers who would pay a monthly
fee to watch as many DVDs as they liked, or
really as many as they could, depending on how much
time it took to ship a new DVD to the
customer and return old DVDs back to Netflix through the mail.
(20:05):
By two thousand, Netflix founder Read Hastings saw the potential
for streaming media to act as a new way to
deliver this type of service to customers. He was also
in fierce competition with Blockbuster, which was still a thing
back then. Initially, Hastings approached Blockbuster with the opportunity of
(20:26):
a partnership in which Netflix would become the streaming component
for the company Blockbuster, but that deal didn't go anywhere.
And that makes sense because back in two thousand when
Hastings was meeting with Blockbuster, broadband connectivity wasn't really a
thing yet. Most customers wouldn't be able to take advantage
(20:46):
of a streaming service, or if they did, it would
have to be at such a compression rate that the
image and sound would be awful, or the size of
a postage stamp, so it didn't make sense at the time.
It would be like watching everything on a super crappy
bootleg VHS tape, and it would take several years for
the technology to evolve to the point that it would
(21:07):
work for the average customer, which is why Netflix wouldn't
introduce its streaming service or even announce it until two
thousand seven. I'll get to that in a little bit,
But in the fall of two thousand six, Steve Jobs
revealed at an Apple event that the company was making
an Apple product that would bring content offered through the
(21:28):
Apple iTunes store to consumer televisions. The original concept was
a box that would sink with an iTunes customers computer
so that the customer could send content that they had
rented or purchased on the iTunes store on their computer
to this box via standard eight oh two eleven WiFi,
(21:48):
So you would send it via WiFi to this box,
and the box would then push this content to a
television through an h d M I cable or through
component video cables d IS remember component video, and then
it also supported both analog and digital audio outputs, so
this box was sort of a middleman between a computer
(22:09):
and the television, and Jobs called it i t V
in the demo, but when it launched the following year,
the company would simply call it Apple TV, and its
initial form, the Apple TV required a networked computer to
supply the content, so this was not a box that
you could just hook up to the Internet at large
and pull down video or music using a user interface
(22:31):
with the box itself. There was this intermediary step with
the networked computer, but this was to try and solve
a problem that a lot of people had, which was
that for a lot of folks, they weren't sure how
to connect their computers to their televisions so that they
could watch Internet streaming content on their TVs. There were
(22:52):
ways to do it, but it wasn't exactly easy for
the average consumer. There involved a lot of different uh hardware, cables,
and different software packages that you needed to do. You
have to worry about different resolutions. It ended up being
something that the average person just wasn't comfortable handling. So
(23:14):
this was Apple's solution to that problem. But in addition
to this intermediary step, the media services that Apple supported
did not include stuff like Netflix or other online media,
and most of the content on iTunes had been optimized
for much smaller screens than your average television, so the
resulting video in those early days of Apple TV wasn't
(23:38):
super high quality. Apple would make adjustments to how it
approached the Apple TV over the following years, and it
includes some online media connectivity and remove the requirement to
sync with a networked computer, which made it more of
a true streaming box over time. But in that early
incarnation you probably wouldn't call it a streaming box. It
(23:58):
was more like a sinking slash downloading box. Also in
two thousand and six, Amazon announced a service called Amazon Unboxed. Now.
This was Amazon's digital video download service, and again This
was all about downloading video content, not streaming it, but
it would serve as the foothold for Amazon to evolve
this service later and to what we now call Prime Video.
(24:21):
I'll get back to that later in this episode. So
while Netflix was emerging from struggling business into a successful
competitor with Blockbuster, there was another guy named Anthony Wood
who was the founder of a DVR company called Replay TV,
who created his sixth company. He named it Roku, which
is Japanese for six. Roku was in the business of
(24:44):
making streaming media products like digital radios and digital signage.
He got into some early discussions with Read Hastings about
developing a streaming video set top box for the company,
but Hastings wasn't really sure about it. Eventually, Anthony would
joined the Netflix team to head up their Internet TV
division while also still running things back at Roku. So
(25:08):
we get close to when Netflix is getting ready to
launch its streaming service, It's web based streaming service in
two thousand seven, and originally Hastings was on board with
actually making a piece of hardware, a set top box
that would be like a VCR or a DVD player,
or more recently a DVR, but this device would pull
(25:30):
content down over the Internet and send it to the television,
so Netflix would have a selection of its titles available
to stream to this box. Internally at Netflix, this device
project was called Griffin. It was named after a character
in the film The Player. Netflix launched a beta of
(25:51):
its streaming service, which again that was just purely web based,
so people were watching these streaming programs on their computers,
and things were headed toward a manufacturing run of the
hardware box that would bring that capability to the living
room television set. But then Hastings began to reconsider this strategy,
(26:13):
and his fear was that if Netflix produced and shipped
its own hardware, its own branded box, it would be
seen as a competitive move against some of the company's
Netflix was partnering with in licensing agreements. So in addition
to the set top box, Woods team was creating a
technology that could be used by other types of manufacturers,
(26:35):
including television manufacturers, video game console manufacturers, and more. The
whole idea was get Netflix on everything, to add that
Netflix connectivity to any device. Hastings reportedly said to someone
in Netflix his worry was if he produced the hardware,
then a company like Apple would never agree to include
(26:57):
Netflix as an option on its own hardware are and
one thing Hastings really wanted to make certain happen was
that Netflix would be available pretty much on any platform
that had an Internet connection. I mean, you even find
refrigerators that have Netflix apps on them. So after some debate,
he scrapped this project. Now that was a big hard
(27:18):
decision to make, because you have to remember that Netflix
had spent a huge amount of money, not to mention
time and effort to develop the technologies for this player.
The company had worked on video buffering techniques to help
make sure that the end user could actually watch a
video without too many interruptions or sudden dips and image
(27:39):
and audio quality. Keeping in mind that even in two
thousand and seven and two thousand and eight when this
was launching, broadband internet speeds still were not you know,
universal by any stretch of the imagination. They had also
gone through all the different phases of design, prototyping, building
out various production early production models, and testing them. It
(28:00):
really had gone pretty darn far. I mean they were
almost at the stage where they could go into full
on production when Hastings decided to pull the plug on
the project, but that work would not go to waste. Instead,
Hastings chose to spin off this development back to Woods company.
Roku now would had been an integral part of developing
(28:24):
this technology, so this wasn't exactly a gift. He had
played an important role in making it happen, so this
was a savvy move to save all of that work
and to leverage it in a different way. Netflix would
be one of many services that the Roku player would
be able to access. It gave Netflix a prominent way
(28:45):
to be a part of a new type of hardware
without the company appearing to horn in on hardware partners.
It also meant Netflix was free to license tech out
to other hardware companies and not create a possible conflicked
as would put it. Ad meant that the company wasn't
faced with questions like should we make decisions based on
(29:06):
what's best for licensing or what's best for our own hardware.
The Roku player would launch in two thousand and eight.
I'll talk about that more in just a second, but
first let's take another quick break. All right back to
late two thousand seven. That's the same year that A
(29:29):
O L Comcast MSN Yahoo, MySpace, remember when my Space
was a thing and Facebook created a joint venture called
Hulu dot Com. The rise of Netflix was making some
media companies a little nervous. No One, and by no one,
(29:49):
I mean none of these media companies really liked the
idea of Netflix becoming the dominant provider of online streaming media,
because then it would be able to dictate terms to
everyone else. Customers might love being able to get everything
on one service, but for the media companies, that wasn't
necessarily the most advantageous arrangement. So Fox and NBC quickly
(30:12):
signed on with Hulu to provide content to the service.
Hulu dot Com would launch on March twelve, two thousand eight.
Back in two thousand and seven, again, there was a
company that was called Voo Doo vu Du that released
its own media player. The media player had the sexy
name of b X one hundred. Now, according to c net,
(30:35):
it was the quote first real internet video on demand
box worthy of the name end quote. Now. To use
the box, you would purchase or rent video. Using the
Voodoo service, you could order programs on screen, which differentiated
it from the early Apple TV. Remember you had to
have a sinc computer to send stuff to the first
(30:58):
generation Apple TV, and it had to be on the
same network as the Apple TV was. The Voodoo b
X one hundred sported a two hundred fifty gigabyte hard drive,
which should be a dead giveaway that this was not
a streaming box. Now, this was a device that was
meant to store videos on an internal hard drive for
you to watch later, so you were effectively downloading movies
(31:22):
to the box. To watch, users would have to connect
an Ethernet cable to the Voodoo box. There was no
built in WiFi support, though you could get an add
on kit that would kind of create a WiFi bridge.
The player had several options when it came to connecting
to a television, though the preferred one was with an
HDMI cable because that would serve as a conduit for
(31:43):
both high definition video and digital audio signals. Still, while
this wasn't early Internet TV box, it wasn't really for
streaming media in the strictest sense. In May two eight,
Roku would launch its Media player, and at that point
it was essentially a Netflix set top box. It retailed
(32:04):
for nine and it had no monthly fee, so you
didn't have to have a subscription to use the Roku.
So a Netflix customer could buy this box for one dollars,
then they bring it home connected to their home network,
connected to their television, and then after a brief set
up process, they could link it with their existing Netflix
(32:25):
account and as long as they maintained that Netflix subscription,
the service would work. Netflix boasted a library of about
one hundred thousand DVD titles at that time, but only
about ten of that library was available for streaming. That
was due to the complicated licensing issues that media companies
(32:45):
always have in place, but that early version of the
Roku was essentially limited to just Netflix. Later updates to
the service and to the hardware would open up compatibility
with numerous services, including stuff like YouTube and Amazon Video,
among others. Speaking of Amazon Video, two thousand eight was
when Amazon renamed Unboxed as Amazon Video on Demand. They
(33:09):
would stick with that name until two thousand eleven, when
they'd rename it again. This time they called it Amazon
Instant Video. This would be about the time when they
started to allow streaming, not just downloads. In two thousand fifteen,
it would get renamed again and would become Amazon Video,
and in two thousand eighteen, it would become Prime Video.
(33:31):
Amazon likes to thumb it's knows that the common wisdom
that changing the name of a product too many times
creates confusion. I guess now. It really wasn't until eleven,
with the rebranding of Amazon Instant Video, that the company
began to push streaming along with the concept of downloading videos,
and eventually they moved away from downloading entirely. They focused
(33:52):
solely on delivering digital video via streaming, so you had
to have a persistent Internet connection to watch these movies.
Now there are a couple of ways you can still
download a digital video, but you have to do it
onto something like a fire tablet or an Android or
iOS device. The big streaming services now included Netflix, Hulu,
(34:14):
and Amazon, but lots of others would follow, like HBO now,
CBS All Access, brit Box for British shows, ESPN Plus,
Disney Plus which is just about the debut as I
record this episode and will be live by the time
this episode goes live, I believe YouTube tv also launched,
and services for video game consoles like Xbox One and
(34:36):
the PlayStation consoles also had online streaming options, but that's
just the services and we're really here to talk also
about the hardware, like the Roku. So what are the
options if you want to hook up a set top
box to your television in order to watch online content,
You've got a whole bunch of them. There are the
(34:57):
video game consoles. That's a great option. The latest versions
can support ultra high definition video content, which is great
if you have a four K television. They also tend
to have support for just about all streaming services. Netflix
led the way on that front because they made sure
that they could be included on all types of hardware,
and a lot of other services followed suit. It's not
(35:18):
the universal truth, however. You might find that some services
are only on one but not the other, particularly the
ones that were made specifically for that console. Obviously, you're
not going to find the PlayStation View Network on the
Xbox console, for example, But on top of the consoles,
you've got lots of other options. For one thing, Most
(35:39):
Blu ray players these days have at least some support
for online streaming services. The very first Blu ray player
launched in the United States did not do that. It
lacked internet connectivity. There was no Ethernet port, and there
was no WiFi, but lots of the Blu ray players
that followed could connect either via WiFi or Ethernet, and
the original intent for that was to create the opportunity
(36:02):
for media companies to enhance the features of a physical
disc with additional online content. So let's say you bought
a Blu Ray version of Oh I don't know, um
Berry Gordon's the Last Dragon, Well, you might discover that
because of internet connectivity, you also have access to additional
features that are not actually found on the disc itself.
(36:23):
But beyond this use case, a lot of companies began
to include support for various online streaming services into Blu
ray players, which turned the Blu ray players into more
of a general media center, not just a disc player.
Then there are the dedicated devices that you connect to
your TV and are all about delivering streaming content. There's
(36:43):
the various versions of Roku, like the Roku Express, the
Roku Premier, plus the Roku Ultra devices. All of those
plug into support on a modern television. There's Google's Chrome Cast,
which lets you stream from a network to computer to
the television, very much like the Apple TV product did.
There's the Video Shield TV with built in support for
(37:05):
Google Assistant. Amazon has the Fire family of streaming devices,
so these are the really big contenders in that space.
From a technological standpoint, they're fairly similar. Most of the
options today can not only push out ultra high definition video,
assuming you have an Internet connection that can accommodate that,
(37:25):
most of them are also compatible with HDR, or high
dynamic range that describes the range of color in a
video feed. So that's both sharpness with the resolution and
color representation with HDR. The differences mostly boiled down to
two really big things, how you interface with the underlying
(37:45):
system so that you can get to the stuff you
want to see, and which streaming services are supported on
each device. But otherwise they're really not that different. There
are proprietary elements to each one, but ultimately all of
them are geared toward pulling data down from the Internet
and feeding it to your television and a signal that
(38:06):
the TV quote unquote understands. Now, in my personal experience,
the thing that matters the most to me is the
UI for the device itself doesn't make sense. Can you
find the stuff you want to look for if you
have to type in a title? Is that easy to do?
Is it responsive. Is there a delay between when I
(38:27):
hit a command and when something actually happens, because if
there is, I hate that. Delays make it really hard
to tell if a device has registered a command. I
can't tell you how many times I've sent back to
back commands to play and then pause because I didn't
realize the device had already registered the play command, so
I pushed it again and then everything just starts, stops,
(38:51):
and jutters, and I hate it. It really gets my
biscuits and burning. And of course, a lot of television
manufacturers are build again a native capability to access these
sorts of services. Many of you out there probably have
televisions that already supports some or all of the streaming
services that I've mentioned on here. The television connects to
(39:12):
your in home network, either hardlined by the net or
through WiFi, and there's no need for any additional hardware
to get access to stuff like Netflix or Amazon Video.
You just have to link it to your existing account.
You're dependent upon the UI designed for that particular television,
which sometimes can be a bit lacking. You might be
surprised to hear that, despite the fact that I host
(39:35):
a technology podcast, I do not have the most cutting
edge versions of these technologies in my own home. For
one thing, I don't own a four K television, so
stuff like Ultra high definition and HDR support would be
wasted on me because my television isn't capable of taking
advantage of those features. So before I did that, I
(39:56):
would need to go out and buy a brand new television,
and believe me, I'm tempted to do it. But at
the same time, my current television still works just fine.
It just can't support anything beyond good old ten A
D resolution, so it's not the best TV, but it works.
So it's hard for me to justify going out and
buying a new one, especially since I'm married to a
(40:18):
woman who's extremely practical. Because trust me, there have been
moments of weakness where I've almost ordered a new four
K TV, but fear for my own personal safety has
outweighed my desire to have the new shiny thing now.
I have owned a Roku Player in the past. I
very much liked it, though it was pretty bare bones
on features and it was a little bit of a
(40:40):
chore to navigate using the stubby little remote control that
came with it. But finally I could watch online content
on my television without much trouble, which was awesome. Now
these days, I have a Chrome Cast, but it's a
first generation Chrome Cast, so it's the one that originally
came out from Google and has just those features. I
also have a first generation Xbox one and a first
(41:02):
generation PlayStation four, so these are all capable of streaming
media to my television, but they lack the more recent
capabilities of Ultra high definition and HDR. In fact, these days,
it's the only way I do watch television is through
these streaming services and these devices. I haven't turned on
cable or even broadcast television in a couple of years now.
(41:25):
Maybe in a future episode, I'll do a full rundown
on the various streaming services that are out there, where
they came from, and how they're competing with each other.
I think there's also a very valuable conversation to have
about consumer frustration. One of the big attractive things about
streaming was this idea of cutting the cord for cable companies.
You'd be able to get what you wanted and you
(41:47):
could ignore the rest of the junk. But we now
have a very fractured online media landscape out there, with
some shows and films that are exclusive to certain platforms,
which means unless you subscribe to multiple services, you're probably
missing out on something you really want to see. The
headaches of streaming are rapidly approaching the same levels of
(42:09):
frustration that you had when you subscribe to an enormous
cable package in which you might only care about a
half dozen channels. But that's a topic for another time.
If you guys have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
send me a message the email addresses tech Stuff at
how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line
on Facebook or Twitter. The handle for both of those
(42:31):
is text Stuff hs W. Don't forget to visit our
website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You'll find a
link to the archive of every tech stuff episode that
has ever been recorded. You also find a link to
our online store where you can make a purchase and
it goes to help our show, and we greatly appreciate it,
and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
(42:58):
is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows, h
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
I Heart Radio and I love all things tech and
ages ago in the Dark Times, our listener Susannah asked
(00:24):
if I might do an episode about streaming hardware. And
I got all excited because I was ready to talk
about fishing bowls and wading boots and nets and stuff.
And then then she explained that she meant streaming media hardware,
and specifically, she wanted to learn more about the various
devices you can purchase to stream Internet content to a television,
(00:45):
like a Roku or an Amazon fire stick, that kind
of stuff. And you know, these days, there are tons
of different options you could choose from if you wanted
to do that. Plus there are plenty of televisions that
have at least some of those capabilities built in to
them natively. But in this episode, we're going to do
a rundown on the history of the trend and how
(01:06):
those various devices work from kind of a high level. Plus,
what if anything really differentiates one device from another? Well,
to understand these devices it's actually a good idea for
us to step back a bit and talk about streaming
media in general. And that actually means that you guys
got to step into the elevator with me. So come
(01:27):
on in, let's playing room, guys, come on, just you know,
cramming here. Okay, Now that we're all in the elevator,
we know a couple of things. First, that darn closed
door button is just total garbage, is not connected to anything.
But we also know that our ears will now be
treated to some lovely instrumental music. Listen. Soothing, isn't it?
(02:06):
And you've likely heard this symphonic masterpiece referred to as
Musaic mu z a K. Well, that's a trademark name,
and it's possible because of a guy named George Owen
Squire way back in the nineteen tents. See, Georgie was
a heck of a guy. He attained the rank of
major general in the U. S. Military. He had a
(02:27):
doctorate from Johns Hopkins University. So this dude was both
super smart and he believed in serving his country, which,
you know, Wow, hats off to you, Major General Squire anyway,
not content with you know, just being a decorated soldier
and holding a PhD. He was also an inventor. In
(02:48):
nineteen eleven, Squire was looking into a method of delivering audio,
both in the form of music and in speech, over
electrical wires, and he called it wired radio, meaning instead
of broadcasting signals using an antenna, he could deliver audio
over physical electrical cables. Now, this was before the days
(03:08):
of consumer radio, and very few people had the equipment
or know how to use a radio at all, so
Squire saw this as a way to deliver audio to
the home without the need for all that equipment and knowledge.
Now that brief explanation makes it sound a lot like
the telephone, which had already been invented, but Squire made
(03:29):
some significant contributions to this technology. In nineteen eleven, he
patented a way to transmit high frequency signals across wires
that were intended for lower frequency transmission. The patent has
the name quote multiplex Telephony and Telegraphy end quote. Now
what this meant in practical terms is that Squire had
(03:51):
found a way to transmit quote a plurality of telephonic
and telegraphic messages over a single telephone circuit end quote,
So one circuit could serve as a conduit for multiple
transmissions simultaneously, and this was done by encoding the audio
signals using different frequencies. So for signal one, you would
(04:14):
have one band of frequencies, for signal two you would
have a different band of frequencies, and because you had
these different bands, you could easily differentiate between different signals.
You would need an encoding device on one end and
a decoding device on the other end in order to
send and receive the proper signals, but the circuits wouldn't
(04:35):
have to do anything special at all. The circuits would
just be the pathway. You didn't have to do anything
special to them, so in many ways this wasn't that
different from actual radio broadcasts. A receiver is capable of
picking up a wide range of radio frequencies. Using a tuner,
you can select one frequency, or in actuality, it's a
(04:57):
narrow band of frequencies around a key frequency. Then you
can pick up a single radio signal, and really it's
more like you're tuning out all the signals that are
not the one you are interested in, right. It's like
it's like making sure that you're ignoring all the noise
so that you get the signal. So, to use an analogy,
(05:18):
it's like if you went to a party where there
are a lot of people talking all at once, but
you're focusing on one specific person to hear what they're saying,
and as a result, you're focusing on them and you're
ignoring everyone else. Well, Squire did the same thing for
transmissions across an electrical wire. He was just using it
with technology as opposed to your focus. Squire donated his
(05:40):
patents to the American public because I mean, come on,
this guy, folks, this guy anyway, by the nineteen twenties,
he was looking to use his technology to send music
to speakers directly. He was taken by the name Kodak.
He thought that sounded really good and thought something similar
would serve as a good name for this service that
(06:02):
would deliver music to customers, and thus he chose Muzak. Now,
it took several years for the Musaic company to get
to the point where it could actually deliver music to
customers over electrical wires. Sadly, Major General Squire would pass
away before that day came. Meanwhile, radio had matured and
(06:23):
companies like our Cia had created consumer radio sets, which
meant there wasn't much point targeting the general public with
this service because radio was already doing it, but it
did still make sense to offer it to businesses and restaurants,
you know, places that might not be able to pick
up a radio signal easily, but these are places that
(06:43):
still maybe wanted to make use of music to improve
the ambiance of the environment. And thus we got elevator
music and an early concept in streaming media. Now we're
gonna skip ahead to nineteen seventy two, so several dec
aids at this point. We can all get out of
the elevator now, by the way, So in nineteen seventy two,
(07:04):
there was a computer scientist an electrical engineer named Nasir
Ahmed who invented a process called discrete cosign transform or
d c T. Now that probably sounds really technical, and
it is, but if we want to be super general
about it to kind of understand what was going on,
we can say that this is a method of representing something,
(07:27):
representing an image, for example, or an audio file, and
you represent it as the sum of various waves that
represent different magnitudes and frequencies, so you're mathematically describing something.
Now that representation has the benefit of taking up much
less data than the thing itself would if you were
(07:48):
to encode it directly. Now, if I were to use
a very general analogy, I would say that we would
imagine there's an artist who has created a painting on
an a norm canvas, and it would be difficult, would
be a hassle, and it would be expensive to ship
this painted canvas because it's just big and bulky, and
(08:10):
it would be delicate, so it'd be hard to do.
So Instead, a messenger of some artistic ability shows up
and studies this painting and writes down a careful description
of that painting, everything from what the painting is, of
the types of materials used in the painting, the colors, everything.
They bring that description then to a destination. At the destination,
(08:34):
another artist takes that description to recreate the original painting,
and it probably won't be a perfect representation of the original.
And in fact, compression technologies that rely on d c
T tend to be lossy formats. That means you lose
some data in the process of compression and decompression. So
(08:55):
I think this tracks anyway. D c T was an
important factor in finding a way to compress a file
down to a more manageable size, and that's the underlying
technology that would make streaming possible in the early days
of the Internet. Okay, well skip ahead again another twenty
years or so. It's time to talk about a former
(09:17):
Microsoft executive named Rob Glazer who formed a new company
in nine called Progressive Networks. Glazier had made a fortune
over at Microsoft. He was part of Microsoft as it
experienced explosive growth, and he rose in the ranks while
he was there, and he became a wealthy man because
(09:38):
of it. He also possesses very strong liberal views. He
grew up with a very strong liberal point of view.
So his original intent with Progressive Networks was to create
a media company that could spread progressive messaging and advocate
for progressive political policies. His team began developing technologies that
(09:59):
would allow of this mission, and that included a downloadable
media player that could act as a sort of plug
in for a web browser. And as it turned out,
when they would talk to investors, the investors were way
more interested in the underlying technology of the company than
the message that Glasier was hoping to spread. Now, keep
in mind that in n the web itself was a
(10:22):
pretty new thing. The very first web page was created
in August nine, so the Web had not been around
for very long at all. The World Wide Web was growing,
but it was extremely primitive compared to what we have today.
It also wasn't able to support rich dynamic material natively.
(10:42):
This is why a plug in would be needed, because
the HTTP protocol couldn't support streaming on its own. Those
were the days when browsing the Internet meant you had
to download half a dozen different plugins if you wanted
to experience everything that was being created, and simultaneously, you
would be opening up potential security vulnerabilities on your computer
(11:05):
because you had to download all these other things to
make that connectivity possible and that that dynamic material possible. Anyway,
back to streaming, Progressive Networks created a suite of technologies
that collectively we're called real Audio all one word big
are big A. This included a proprietary streaming format and
(11:27):
a plug in player, and the concept was great because
it would allow you to listen to an audio file
while you were in the process of downloading that file,
so you didn't have to wait for the full file
to download before you could start to listen. Sort of
similar to how images used to load in browsers, because
in the good old days, downloading an image meant you
would watch as line by line of pixels appeared on
(11:50):
your screen until you got the finished picture. Well, this
was similar, except you were hearing audio that was recorded
at a low bit rate, so it wasn't super high
quality do that was a limitation of the technology at
the time, and you could listen to it while that
audio file was downloading to your machine. It was sort
of like laying down railroad tracks while there's a train
(12:11):
slowly catching up to you from behind. Blazer's team recognized
that this approach would let you do more than just
listen to, say, a music file as you downloaded it.
It would also let you stream audio from a broadcast
source across the Internet so that people could listen in live.
It was like a live radio broadcast, but using the
(12:32):
Internet to carry the signal rather than the airwaves. So
really you could think of this as the next step
after using those electrical wires to carry multiple audio signals
like music did so. On September five, Progressive Networks partnered
with ESPN Sports Zone and they transmitted a baseball game.
It was the Seattle Mariners versus the New York Yankees,
(12:55):
and for the first time, anyone interested in the game
who happened to be subscriber to ESPN Sports Zone and
have a computer enabled with sound and an Internet connection,
and this player could listen in on this audio transmission
on this real audio platform. It was a good game
to the Mariners led six to one at the top
(13:15):
of the sixth and then the Yankees managed to score
four more runs, so the final game score was six
five Mariners, which is not a bad debut for streaming audio,
might have been a tough blow to Yankees fans. It
was a big pr success for Glazier's company, not to
mention for Glazier himself, since he was part owner of
the Mariners. However, the actual reach of this broadcast was
(13:39):
pretty modest. Only a few hundred people had the ability
to receive the streaming audio because they met all the
criteria that were required in order to do so. But
it marked the beginning of an era. That being said,
it wasn't exactly off to the races for streaming media.
Glazier's team had created the first platform capable of play
(14:00):
being live streamed audio on the Internet, but there wasn't
exactly an overabundance of opportunities to use that capability. The
Internet in general and the Web in particular, we're still
pretty young, at least for the public use of those utilities. Moreover,
connectivity speeds weren't exactly at broadband levels. The vast majority
(14:21):
of Internet users in the United States were relying on
dial up modems that had hefty limitations on download speeds,
so it would take time for communications companies to develop
and roll out broadband connectivity. Heck, you know, we're still
seeing pretty slow rollout in some communities in the United States,
but that's a discussion for another day. Progressive Networks struck
(14:42):
up a deal in with Microsoft, and this agreement meant
that Microsoft would include a distribution of the Real Audio
player with Internet Explorer, and that gave Progressive Networks a
huge boost in adoption. Meanwhile, the company was hard at
work to create Real Video, which was essentially for streaming
(15:02):
video what Real Audio was for streaming audio. Real Video
would debut in around that same time. Bill Gates over
at Microsoft was beginning to think he made an error
in helping out Progressive Networks. Gates saw that streaming media
had the potential to be much bigger than it had
been in it was mostly viewed as a curiosity then,
(15:25):
and he felt that Microsoft really needed to own a
piece of that business, or being Microsoft, he probably felt
that it needed to own all of it. Initially, Microsoft
entered the industry by purchasing a competing streaming media company,
but then Glazer met with Gates and the two hashed
out a licensing deal that would embed real audio and
(15:46):
real video technology in Microsoft's Windows Media Player platform. Progressive
Networks would then change its name to Real Networks and
it would continue to butt heads against Microsoft, but that's
outside the realm of our focus for this episode. Now,
before I go on, let's take a quick break to
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let's get back to streaming media. Back in the nineteen nineties,
(17:32):
no one was really sure how the streaming media thing
was going to play out. There was a real sense
that there would be some big battles brewing between the
entrenched old media, that being radio and television and this
upstart new media enabled by the Internet. There's a piece
and Wired titled Real Revolution, which obviously is largely about
(17:54):
progressive network slash real networks Rise, and it has a
very prescient vision of what would eventually turn into reality
in the form of sites like YouTube. Now I'm gonna
quote Robert Ride's article because it's really interesting how on
target he was, though it was about a decade early.
(18:14):
Ryan was talking about the possibilities that open up once
technology allows for the transmission of video so that you
can view it in a full sized window on a
computer screen. And here's what he says him quote all
this could wreak havoc with the competitive dynamics of the
TV industry, opening millions of living rooms to any hyperactive
(18:37):
kid with a video camera, a computer and a phone line,
which may soon mean most kids in America. Or it
could give the likes of Murdoch and Ted Turner and
eight Lane Highway into the heartland of the traditionally democratized,
decentralized net or maybe do both end quote and you
know what, bingo, he hit the nail on the head there,
(19:00):
because that's exactly what we've seen. YouTube created the opportunity
for regular folks to upload videos for the world to
see and later to stream live video to the world
as well. Bigger media companies, the traditional ones, would also
take advantage of tech to offer streaming services from established
traditional media companies. And we've seen content made for cinemas
(19:23):
and broadcast or cable television repackaged for the Internet. But
we've also seen a lot of projects made specifically for
those streaming services themselves. So yeah, that was a great prediction.
Now let's shift gears a bit. So while real video
was launching in another company was just getting started. That
(19:45):
company was Netflix, which when it started was all about
renting out DVDs to customers who would pay a monthly
fee to watch as many DVDs as they liked, or
really as many as they could, depending on how much
time it took to ship a new DVD to the
customer and return old DVDs back to Netflix through the mail.
(20:05):
By two thousand, Netflix founder Read Hastings saw the potential
for streaming media to act as a new way to
deliver this type of service to customers. He was also
in fierce competition with Blockbuster, which was still a thing
back then. Initially, Hastings approached Blockbuster with the opportunity of
(20:26):
a partnership in which Netflix would become the streaming component
for the company Blockbuster, but that deal didn't go anywhere.
And that makes sense because back in two thousand when
Hastings was meeting with Blockbuster, broadband connectivity wasn't really a
thing yet. Most customers wouldn't be able to take advantage
(20:46):
of a streaming service, or if they did, it would
have to be at such a compression rate that the
image and sound would be awful, or the size of
a postage stamp, so it didn't make sense at the time.
It would be like watching everything on a super crappy
bootleg VHS tape, and it would take several years for
the technology to evolve to the point that it would
(21:07):
work for the average customer, which is why Netflix wouldn't
introduce its streaming service or even announce it until two
thousand seven. I'll get to that in a little bit,
But in the fall of two thousand six, Steve Jobs
revealed at an Apple event that the company was making
an Apple product that would bring content offered through the
(21:28):
Apple iTunes store to consumer televisions. The original concept was
a box that would sink with an iTunes customers computer
so that the customer could send content that they had
rented or purchased on the iTunes store on their computer
to this box via standard eight oh two eleven WiFi,
(21:48):
So you would send it via WiFi to this box,
and the box would then push this content to a
television through an h d M I cable or through
component video cables d IS remember component video, and then
it also supported both analog and digital audio outputs, so
this box was sort of a middleman between a computer
(22:09):
and the television, and Jobs called it i t V
in the demo, but when it launched the following year,
the company would simply call it Apple TV, and its
initial form, the Apple TV required a networked computer to
supply the content, so this was not a box that
you could just hook up to the Internet at large
and pull down video or music using a user interface
(22:31):
with the box itself. There was this intermediary step with
the networked computer, but this was to try and solve
a problem that a lot of people had, which was
that for a lot of folks, they weren't sure how
to connect their computers to their televisions so that they
could watch Internet streaming content on their TVs. There were
(22:52):
ways to do it, but it wasn't exactly easy for
the average consumer. There involved a lot of different uh hardware, cables,
and different software packages that you needed to do. You
have to worry about different resolutions. It ended up being
something that the average person just wasn't comfortable handling. So
(23:14):
this was Apple's solution to that problem. But in addition
to this intermediary step, the media services that Apple supported
did not include stuff like Netflix or other online media,
and most of the content on iTunes had been optimized
for much smaller screens than your average television, so the
resulting video in those early days of Apple TV wasn't
(23:38):
super high quality. Apple would make adjustments to how it
approached the Apple TV over the following years, and it
includes some online media connectivity and remove the requirement to
sync with a networked computer, which made it more of
a true streaming box over time. But in that early
incarnation you probably wouldn't call it a streaming box. It
(23:58):
was more like a sinking slash downloading box. Also in
two thousand and six, Amazon announced a service called Amazon Unboxed. Now.
This was Amazon's digital video download service, and again This
was all about downloading video content, not streaming it, but
it would serve as the foothold for Amazon to evolve
this service later and to what we now call Prime Video.
(24:21):
I'll get back to that later in this episode. So
while Netflix was emerging from struggling business into a successful
competitor with Blockbuster, there was another guy named Anthony Wood
who was the founder of a DVR company called Replay TV,
who created his sixth company. He named it Roku, which
is Japanese for six. Roku was in the business of
(24:44):
making streaming media products like digital radios and digital signage.
He got into some early discussions with Read Hastings about
developing a streaming video set top box for the company,
but Hastings wasn't really sure about it. Eventually, Anthony would
joined the Netflix team to head up their Internet TV
division while also still running things back at Roku. So
(25:08):
we get close to when Netflix is getting ready to
launch its streaming service, It's web based streaming service in
two thousand seven, and originally Hastings was on board with
actually making a piece of hardware, a set top box
that would be like a VCR or a DVD player,
or more recently a DVR, but this device would pull
(25:30):
content down over the Internet and send it to the television,
so Netflix would have a selection of its titles available
to stream to this box. Internally at Netflix, this device
project was called Griffin. It was named after a character
in the film The Player. Netflix launched a beta of
(25:51):
its streaming service, which again that was just purely web based,
so people were watching these streaming programs on their computers,
and things were headed toward a manufacturing run of the
hardware box that would bring that capability to the living
room television set. But then Hastings began to reconsider this strategy,
(26:13):
and his fear was that if Netflix produced and shipped
its own hardware, its own branded box, it would be
seen as a competitive move against some of the company's
Netflix was partnering with in licensing agreements. So in addition
to the set top box, Woods team was creating a
technology that could be used by other types of manufacturers,
(26:35):
including television manufacturers, video game console manufacturers, and more. The
whole idea was get Netflix on everything, to add that
Netflix connectivity to any device. Hastings reportedly said to someone
in Netflix his worry was if he produced the hardware,
then a company like Apple would never agree to include
(26:57):
Netflix as an option on its own hardware are and
one thing Hastings really wanted to make certain happen was
that Netflix would be available pretty much on any platform
that had an Internet connection. I mean, you even find
refrigerators that have Netflix apps on them. So after some debate,
he scrapped this project. Now that was a big hard
(27:18):
decision to make, because you have to remember that Netflix
had spent a huge amount of money, not to mention
time and effort to develop the technologies for this player.
The company had worked on video buffering techniques to help
make sure that the end user could actually watch a
video without too many interruptions or sudden dips and image
(27:39):
and audio quality. Keeping in mind that even in two
thousand and seven and two thousand and eight when this
was launching, broadband internet speeds still were not you know,
universal by any stretch of the imagination. They had also
gone through all the different phases of design, prototyping, building
out various production early production models, and testing them. It
(28:00):
really had gone pretty darn far. I mean they were
almost at the stage where they could go into full
on production when Hastings decided to pull the plug on
the project, but that work would not go to waste. Instead,
Hastings chose to spin off this development back to Woods company.
Roku now would had been an integral part of developing
(28:24):
this technology, so this wasn't exactly a gift. He had
played an important role in making it happen, so this
was a savvy move to save all of that work
and to leverage it in a different way. Netflix would
be one of many services that the Roku player would
be able to access. It gave Netflix a prominent way
(28:45):
to be a part of a new type of hardware
without the company appearing to horn in on hardware partners.
It also meant Netflix was free to license tech out
to other hardware companies and not create a possible conflicked
as would put it. Ad meant that the company wasn't
faced with questions like should we make decisions based on
(29:06):
what's best for licensing or what's best for our own hardware.
The Roku player would launch in two thousand and eight.
I'll talk about that more in just a second, but
first let's take another quick break. All right back to
late two thousand seven. That's the same year that A
(29:29):
O L Comcast MSN Yahoo, MySpace, remember when my Space
was a thing and Facebook created a joint venture called
Hulu dot Com. The rise of Netflix was making some
media companies a little nervous. No One, and by no one,
(29:49):
I mean none of these media companies really liked the
idea of Netflix becoming the dominant provider of online streaming media,
because then it would be able to dictate terms to
everyone else. Customers might love being able to get everything
on one service, but for the media companies, that wasn't
necessarily the most advantageous arrangement. So Fox and NBC quickly
(30:12):
signed on with Hulu to provide content to the service.
Hulu dot Com would launch on March twelve, two thousand eight.
Back in two thousand and seven, again, there was a
company that was called Voo Doo vu Du that released
its own media player. The media player had the sexy
name of b X one hundred. Now, according to c net,
(30:35):
it was the quote first real internet video on demand
box worthy of the name end quote. Now. To use
the box, you would purchase or rent video. Using the
Voodoo service, you could order programs on screen, which differentiated
it from the early Apple TV. Remember you had to
have a sinc computer to send stuff to the first
(30:58):
generation Apple TV, and it had to be on the
same network as the Apple TV was. The Voodoo b
X one hundred sported a two hundred fifty gigabyte hard drive,
which should be a dead giveaway that this was not
a streaming box. Now, this was a device that was
meant to store videos on an internal hard drive for
you to watch later, so you were effectively downloading movies
(31:22):
to the box. To watch, users would have to connect
an Ethernet cable to the Voodoo box. There was no
built in WiFi support, though you could get an add
on kit that would kind of create a WiFi bridge.
The player had several options when it came to connecting
to a television, though the preferred one was with an
HDMI cable because that would serve as a conduit for
(31:43):
both high definition video and digital audio signals. Still, while
this wasn't early Internet TV box, it wasn't really for
streaming media in the strictest sense. In May two eight,
Roku would launch its Media player, and at that point
it was essentially a Netflix set top box. It retailed
(32:04):
for nine and it had no monthly fee, so you
didn't have to have a subscription to use the Roku.
So a Netflix customer could buy this box for one dollars,
then they bring it home connected to their home network,
connected to their television, and then after a brief set
up process, they could link it with their existing Netflix
(32:25):
account and as long as they maintained that Netflix subscription,
the service would work. Netflix boasted a library of about
one hundred thousand DVD titles at that time, but only
about ten of that library was available for streaming. That
was due to the complicated licensing issues that media companies
(32:45):
always have in place, but that early version of the
Roku was essentially limited to just Netflix. Later updates to
the service and to the hardware would open up compatibility
with numerous services, including stuff like YouTube and Amazon Video,
among others. Speaking of Amazon Video, two thousand eight was
when Amazon renamed Unboxed as Amazon Video on Demand. They
(33:09):
would stick with that name until two thousand eleven, when
they'd rename it again. This time they called it Amazon
Instant Video. This would be about the time when they
started to allow streaming, not just downloads. In two thousand fifteen,
it would get renamed again and would become Amazon Video,
and in two thousand eighteen, it would become Prime Video.
(33:31):
Amazon likes to thumb it's knows that the common wisdom
that changing the name of a product too many times
creates confusion. I guess now. It really wasn't until eleven,
with the rebranding of Amazon Instant Video, that the company
began to push streaming along with the concept of downloading videos,
and eventually they moved away from downloading entirely. They focused
(33:52):
solely on delivering digital video via streaming, so you had
to have a persistent Internet connection to watch these movies.
Now there are a couple of ways you can still
download a digital video, but you have to do it
onto something like a fire tablet or an Android or
iOS device. The big streaming services now included Netflix, Hulu,
(34:14):
and Amazon, but lots of others would follow, like HBO now,
CBS All Access, brit Box for British shows, ESPN Plus,
Disney Plus which is just about the debut as I
record this episode and will be live by the time
this episode goes live, I believe YouTube tv also launched,
and services for video game consoles like Xbox One and
(34:36):
the PlayStation consoles also had online streaming options, but that's
just the services and we're really here to talk also
about the hardware, like the Roku. So what are the
options if you want to hook up a set top
box to your television in order to watch online content,
You've got a whole bunch of them. There are the
(34:57):
video game consoles. That's a great option. The latest versions
can support ultra high definition video content, which is great
if you have a four K television. They also tend
to have support for just about all streaming services. Netflix
led the way on that front because they made sure
that they could be included on all types of hardware,
and a lot of other services followed suit. It's not
(35:18):
the universal truth, however. You might find that some services
are only on one but not the other, particularly the
ones that were made specifically for that console. Obviously, you're
not going to find the PlayStation View Network on the
Xbox console, for example, But on top of the consoles,
you've got lots of other options. For one thing, Most
(35:39):
Blu ray players these days have at least some support
for online streaming services. The very first Blu ray player
launched in the United States did not do that. It
lacked internet connectivity. There was no Ethernet port, and there
was no WiFi, but lots of the Blu ray players
that followed could connect either via WiFi or Ethernet, and
the original intent for that was to create the opportunity
(36:02):
for media companies to enhance the features of a physical
disc with additional online content. So let's say you bought
a Blu Ray version of Oh I don't know, um
Berry Gordon's the Last Dragon, Well, you might discover that
because of internet connectivity, you also have access to additional
features that are not actually found on the disc itself.
(36:23):
But beyond this use case, a lot of companies began
to include support for various online streaming services into Blu
ray players, which turned the Blu ray players into more
of a general media center, not just a disc player.
Then there are the dedicated devices that you connect to
your TV and are all about delivering streaming content. There's
(36:43):
the various versions of Roku, like the Roku Express, the
Roku Premier, plus the Roku Ultra devices. All of those
plug into support on a modern television. There's Google's Chrome Cast,
which lets you stream from a network to computer to
the television, very much like the Apple TV product did.
There's the Video Shield TV with built in support for
(37:05):
Google Assistant. Amazon has the Fire family of streaming devices,
so these are the really big contenders in that space.
From a technological standpoint, they're fairly similar. Most of the
options today can not only push out ultra high definition video,
assuming you have an Internet connection that can accommodate that,
(37:25):
most of them are also compatible with HDR, or high
dynamic range that describes the range of color in a
video feed. So that's both sharpness with the resolution and
color representation with HDR. The differences mostly boiled down to
two really big things, how you interface with the underlying
(37:45):
system so that you can get to the stuff you
want to see, and which streaming services are supported on
each device. But otherwise they're really not that different. There
are proprietary elements to each one, but ultimately all of
them are geared toward pulling data down from the Internet
and feeding it to your television and a signal that
(38:06):
the TV quote unquote understands. Now, in my personal experience,
the thing that matters the most to me is the
UI for the device itself doesn't make sense. Can you
find the stuff you want to look for if you
have to type in a title? Is that easy to do?
Is it responsive. Is there a delay between when I
(38:27):
hit a command and when something actually happens, because if
there is, I hate that. Delays make it really hard
to tell if a device has registered a command. I
can't tell you how many times I've sent back to
back commands to play and then pause because I didn't
realize the device had already registered the play command, so
I pushed it again and then everything just starts, stops,
(38:51):
and jutters, and I hate it. It really gets my
biscuits and burning. And of course, a lot of television
manufacturers are build again a native capability to access these
sorts of services. Many of you out there probably have
televisions that already supports some or all of the streaming
services that I've mentioned on here. The television connects to
(39:12):
your in home network, either hardlined by the net or
through WiFi, and there's no need for any additional hardware
to get access to stuff like Netflix or Amazon Video.
You just have to link it to your existing account.
You're dependent upon the UI designed for that particular television,
which sometimes can be a bit lacking. You might be
surprised to hear that, despite the fact that I host
(39:35):
a technology podcast, I do not have the most cutting
edge versions of these technologies in my own home. For
one thing, I don't own a four K television, so
stuff like Ultra high definition and HDR support would be
wasted on me because my television isn't capable of taking
advantage of those features. So before I did that, I
(39:56):
would need to go out and buy a brand new television,
and believe me, I'm tempted to do it. But at
the same time, my current television still works just fine.
It just can't support anything beyond good old ten A
D resolution, so it's not the best TV, but it works.
So it's hard for me to justify going out and
buying a new one, especially since I'm married to a
(40:18):
woman who's extremely practical. Because trust me, there have been
moments of weakness where I've almost ordered a new four
K TV, but fear for my own personal safety has
outweighed my desire to have the new shiny thing now.
I have owned a Roku Player in the past. I
very much liked it, though it was pretty bare bones
on features and it was a little bit of a
(40:40):
chore to navigate using the stubby little remote control that
came with it. But finally I could watch online content
on my television without much trouble, which was awesome. Now
these days, I have a Chrome Cast, but it's a
first generation Chrome Cast, so it's the one that originally
came out from Google and has just those features. I
also have a first generation Xbox one and a first
(41:02):
generation PlayStation four, so these are all capable of streaming
media to my television, but they lack the more recent
capabilities of Ultra high definition and HDR. In fact, these days,
it's the only way I do watch television is through
these streaming services and these devices. I haven't turned on
cable or even broadcast television in a couple of years now.
(41:25):
Maybe in a future episode, I'll do a full rundown
on the various streaming services that are out there, where
they came from, and how they're competing with each other.
I think there's also a very valuable conversation to have
about consumer frustration. One of the big attractive things about
streaming was this idea of cutting the cord for cable companies.
You'd be able to get what you wanted and you
(41:47):
could ignore the rest of the junk. But we now
have a very fractured online media landscape out there, with
some shows and films that are exclusive to certain platforms,
which means unless you subscribe to multiple services, you're probably
missing out on something you really want to see. The
headaches of streaming are rapidly approaching the same levels of
(42:09):
frustration that you had when you subscribe to an enormous
cable package in which you might only care about a
half dozen channels. But that's a topic for another time.
If you guys have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
send me a message the email addresses tech Stuff at
how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line
on Facebook or Twitter. The handle for both of those
(42:31):
is text Stuff hs W. Don't forget to visit our
website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You'll find a
link to the archive of every tech stuff episode that
has ever been recorded. You also find a link to
our online store where you can make a purchase and
it goes to help our show, and we greatly appreciate it,
and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
(42:58):
is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
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TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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