Page 330 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Onl ne D g tal F lm and Telev s on | 0

are also part of a much longer history of film and television distribution of the
postwar era.
Online video, both downloaded or streaming, has become a widely prac-
ticed form of film and television consumption. The term “online video” gener-
ally refers to video received over an Internet connection through the use of a
browser or other video application. The relatively new method of distribution
and exhibition, in conjunction with the increasing affordability of digital video for
production, also has changed the definition of what constitutes film, television,
or entertainment online. Consumers of online visual media watch a range that
includes pirated movies, professional or home-recorded television shows, home
movies, music videos, amateur or “independent” films, and so on. Because of the
broad, growing, and free (with an Internet connection) selection of “shows,” var-
ious media corporations assess whether to fight the new modes of production
to consumption (in the form of lawsuits) or embrace them (as opportunities for
publicity).

quaLiTy EnTErTainmEnT
The battles currently being fought often reiterate the history of film against
television, quality versus content, and public space versus private. From the
mid-1950s to 1960s, primarily in the United States and parts of Europe, televi-
sion overtook film as the primary vehicle for visual entertainment. Although
viewers had to watch small, black-and-white screens, they enjoyed the free en-
tertainment brought to their homes (once they invested in the set). As Holly-
wood saw its viewership and revenue drop, many of the major studios invested
in productions that would be differentiated from television’s low quality: wide-
screen color spectaculars such as Ben-Hur (1959). Similar to early television,
online video continue to be a low-resolution and small-screen medium, a qual-
ity still necessary to make download times invisible to the viewer. One of the
first applications for streaming video was RealVideo, first released in 1997 as
part of a media player application, RealPlayer. Upgraded from an earlier audio-
only product, the new RealPlayer provided low-grade video during a time when
most Internet consumers were using telephone modems with low bandwidth
connections of 14.4 or 28.8 kilobytes per second. By the early 2000s, streaming
video has been taken over by the dominant PC penetration of Flash Player–
based playback technology (started by San Francisco company Macromedia),
which has had greater success at embedding video within a Web page and, con-
sequently, has played a part in the explosively successful practice of online video
sharing on Web sites such as YouTube.
Like the battle between the quality theater screen versus the black-and-white
television (and quality Beta videotapes versus VHS during the video age), cur-
rently there is some division between the television screen and the computer
monitor. On one end, some television set manufacturers create product differ-
entiation by following the path of the home theater from the 1980s, emphasiz-
ing large screens, high-fidelity sound systems, and, in the 2000s, high-definition
images. On the opposite end of the spectrum, manufacturers have taken notice