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It\u2019s 1995, and I\u2019m trying to watch a video on the internet. I entered the longest, most complex URL I\u2019d ever seen into AOL\u2019s web browser to view a trailer for Paul W.S. Anderson\u2019s long-awaited film adaptation of Mortal Kombat<\/em>. I found it in an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly<\/em>, tucked away in the bottom of a full-page ad for the film. Online marketing at the time was such an afterthought, studios didn\u2019t even bother grabbing short and memorable web addresses for their major releases, let alone dedicated websites. (Star Trek Generations<\/em><\/a> and Stargate<\/em> were among the few early exceptions.)<\/p>\n After the interminable process of transcribing the URL from print, I gathered my family around our Packard Bell PC (powered by an Intel 486 DX and, let\u2019s say, 8MB of RAM), hit return and waited as the video slowly came down our 33.6kbps dial-up connection. And waited. It took 25 minutes for it to fully load. After corralling my family once again, I hit play and was treated to an horrendously compressed, low-resolution version of the trailer I\u2019d been dreaming about for months. It was unwatchable. The audio was shit. But that was the moment I became obsessed with online video.<\/p>\n I imagined a futuristic world beyond my boxy CRT set and limited cable TV subscription. A time after VHS tapes when I could just type in a URL and enjoy a show or movie while eating one of those rehydrated Pizza Hut pies from Back to the Future 2<\/em>. The internet would make it so.<\/p>\n Looking back now, almost 30 years later, and 20 years after Engadget sprung to life, I realize my 11-year-old self was spot on. The rise of online video transformed the internet from a place where we\u2019d browse the web, update our LiveJournals, steal music and chat with friends on AIM to a place where we could also just sit back and relax. For Millennials, it quickly made our computer screens more important than our TVs. What I didn\u2019t expect, though, was that streaming video would also completely upend Hollywood and the entire entertainment industry.<\/p>\n If my experience with the Mortal Kombat<\/em> trailer didn\u2019t make it clear enough, video was a disaster on the internet in the \u201990s. Most web surfers (as we were known as the time) were stuck with terribly slow modems and similarly unimpressive desktop systems. But really, the problem goes back to dealing with video on computers.<\/p>\n Apple\u2019s Quicktime format made Macs the ideal platform for multimedia creators, and, together with its Hypercard software for creating interactive multimedia databases, it spawned the rise of Myst<\/em> and the obsession with mixed-media educational software. PCs relied on MPEG-1, which debuted in 1993 and was mainly for VCDs and some digital TV providers. The problem with both formats was space: Hard drives were notoriously small and expensive at the time, which made CDs the main option for accessing any sort of video on your computer. If your computer only had a 500MB hard drive, a slim disc that could store 650MB seemed like magic.<\/p>\n But that also meant video had no place in the early internet. RealPlayer was the first true stab at delivering streaming video and audio online \u2014 and while it was better than waiting 20 minutes for a huge file to download, it was still hard to actually stream media when you were constrained by a dial-up modem. I remember seeing buffering alerts more than I did any actual RealPlayer content. It took the proliferation of broadband internet access and one special app from Adobe to make web video truly viable.<\/p>\n While we may curse its name today, it\u2019s worth remembering how vital Macromedia Flash was to the web in the early 2000s. (We\u2019ve been around long enough to cover Adobe\u2019s acquisition of Macromedia in 2005<\/a>!) Its support for vector graphics, stylized text and simple games injected new life into the internet, and it allowed just about anyone to create that content. HTML just wasn\u2019t enough. Ask any teen or 20-something who was online at the time, and they could probably still recite most of The End of the World<\/em><\/a> by heart.<\/p>\n