Streaming technology is something that practically everyone uses. It’s a simple part of life, as an extension of the convenience philosophy that drives so many technological developments. It means greater choice, less time waiting around, and the ability to re-engage as many times as a user likes. It’s also one of the things that we quite often take for granted. Taking a look at current uses and comparing them to older solutions, we want to explore just how far streaming has come, and why we should appreciate it more than we often do.
Game Streaming
Starting with the latest big development in streaming, game streaming is difficult to implement as some systems still struggle in this regard. In the video gaming world, game streaming is best represented by systems like Google’s Stadia and Microsoft’s xCloud. While a promising step, and perfectly viable for some games, latency concerns mean that these systems will never be perfect for games that require quick reflexes. That said, their ability to run cutting-edge PC and console games on mobiles, and their perfect capacity to play turn-based titles makes video game streaming a promising hit.
More reliable implementation of this idea can be found in gambling, with live casino online games. Here, titles like Lightning Roulette and Super Sic Bo combine live-streamed dealers with at-home user interfaces to create games that fuse the convenience of online play with the feel of a physical casino. With far lower requirements than their video gaming cousins, these online casino games have proved an industry smash. Beyond that, many mobile players have embraced this too due to the lower requirements needed.
Video and Music Streaming
The big streaming hits of video and music are so popular as to not require any major introductions. Spotify and Netflix have revolutionized the way we consume audio/visual media, making what was once laborious an incredibly easy task. To illustrate this, consider a use-case of watching ten movies or listening to ten albums on the go.
In the modern age, achieving this goal would require nothing more than a few taps on a mobile screen. In the nineties, a movie watcher would have to carry around ten physical DVDs or VHS tapes to achieve the same feat, alongside a battery-hungry mobile playing device. A similar issue would apply to music, where a user would have to at least carry a storage case, a player, and enough batteries to keep the music playing. While both of these are theoretically possible, they’re not something that 95% of the population would consider.
Today, we can find ourselves getting frustrated when a TV is slow to load an app, or when we run out of space on our phones, making us unable to store our three-hundredth album. We’ve become so used to on-demand entertainment that our expectations have skyrocketed. If you find yourself in these scenarios, consider taking a step back and looking at the long road travelled. Our media experiences today are better than ever before, and we need to appreciate that more than we often do. Remember, you’re living in the future, even if you don’t have the flying car to prove it.
