[jtuple]

Netflix 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???

[pyuser583]

Netflix 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.

[eCa]

> 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.

[hbn]

> As a non-American, how were you watching movies in 1997?

Video stores?

[ClassyJacket]

I 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.