A Look Back at Streaming Video's 2020
In many ways, 2020 feels more like a decade than a year. From global warming to global warnings, from political instability to pandemic uncertainty, from Wall Street cratering to Wall Street pretending nothing happened, 2020 has played out like a Saturday night doubleheader of B-grade horror movies that our parents attended back in the dark ages. Except this decade-long year of 2020 is the real thing. 这 is 现实.
回顾过去的一年, 虽然, 当然也不全是坏事, at least not from a streaming perspective. 毕竟, almost every schoolchild and working adult in these United States now knows not only what Zoom is but also about 50种不同的用法, 包括讲座, 班级聚会, 婚礼, 葬礼(和, 可悲的是, Zoombombing). Zoom, like Google, has almost become so ubiquitous that it’s at risk of 被转化为动词的. At the very least, I suspect it’ll be one of the words of the year when the 牛津字典 folks release their newest list.
这 was also the year that several major premium content companies went direct to consumer with their own streaming platforms. 及时赶到, 太, 作为传统广播, 活动场所, and amusement parks all came under significant financial strain. 在短短一年内, Disney has gone from using Disney+ as a loss-leader funnel into its theme parks to seeing streaming as the primary focus of the company—enough so that it launched 汉密尔顿 online to drive subscribers, then sold those subscribers the upcharge of watching the 木兰 改造, 减去剧院的体验, since both stage and screen remain closed in much of the country.
It is true that the streaming industry had some low points, including the "disbanding" of the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG), technical glitches at some major now-online-only events, and the release of so many new codecs that we’re back to asking if our former selves learned nothing in the halcyon days of the late 1990s and early aughts, 和平之前 罗马帝国.264 came into effect and helped the industry grow through a common video compression scheme.
尽管如此，H.264还在, as witnessed by a number of surveys, 报告, and conference speakers in late 2020 who continue to remind us that H.264还有腿. We’ve been saying that now for almost 3 decades, starting in the ’90s videoconferencing days. 这是 几乎像H.264 is a zombie that won't die.
On a personal note, I’m thankful for streaming in a way I didn’t expect I'd experience in 2020: I got married the weekend before the lockdowns in mid-March, and the only way people from across the globe—who had planned to attend, before flights were canceled and borders closed—could celebrate with us in real time was to watch the live stream that a fellow streaming exec offered up and emceed.
As the streaming industry continues to set record after record for streaming delivery, with on-demand content consumption surging above pre-pandemic levels—and holding 稳定的, even after lockdowns eased—and live user-generated content (UGC) stepping up in such quantities that it seems like UGC is re-applying for the title of King of Content, it feels almost like deja vu from the big streaming party that was 1998 or 1999.
But, as Prince warned us, "Forgive me if it goes astray / But when I woke up this mornin’ / Could have sworn it was Judgment Day." So let’s hope that we’re not going to be waxing nostalgic for 2020 anytime soon and that the future includes more streaming records but fewer coronas (viruses not cervezas).
With all that’s gone down in 2020, I’m hesitant to even approach my normal look forward into next year. 事实上, I'll save that for the first column of 2021 and conclude here with one more 虽然t about the year that we’ve just been through: "You know what they say about hindsight …"
Let’s just hope that saying ends with 2020 and doesn’t follow us into 2021.
[这 article appears in the November/December issue of 流媒体 magazine as "思维之流: Hindsight."