All Animes: Re: [animeontv] Re: Anime Insider cancelltion a sad day.

The Internet has changed the dynamics of several key markets. News
outlets is one of them, and entertainment is another. Newspapers just
can't keep up with the rapid change of world events or the speed at
which the Internet can deliver the news. The Internet has already
have a major impact on newspaper classified ads with Craigslist pretty
much dominating things in that arena.

Anime is appearing more and more online. Legitimate streaming sites
like Hulu.com, Joost.com, and Crunchyroll.com are showing entire
series, and both Hulu.com and Crunchyroll.com are showing new episodes
of the Naruto Shippuden series immediately after they air in Japan
with English subtitles. More and more anime titles are appearing on
Netflix's lineup of rentals and on their streaming service, and anime
is even appearing on iTunes.

Even the realm of gaming is about to be revolutionized by the Internet
this year by a new service called OnLive. It will go into Beta this
summer, I've signed up, and likely be available by this Fall. It will
be a subscription-based service which is remotely different from say
Gametap, Steam or Impulse. OnLive is essentially "Cloud Gaming",
where the games run on a series of massive server farms and are
streamed to your PC or Mac via a browser plugin, or a mini-console for
your HDTV. A 1mbps connection is needed for standard 480p resolution
and 5mbps+ is needed for 1080p resolution. Several major game
developers are already on-board with the service including EA, Epic
Games, Atari, and more. The Close Beta currently has a lineup of 16
game titles including Unreal Tournament III, Crysis and Call of Duty
4. The project is headed up by Steve Pearlman, the man who created
WebTV, a service which actually worked and quite well before Micro$oft
took it over and ruined it. Game developers at the Game Developer's
Conference are pretty excited about this project, the demo wowed them,
and there's a lot of buzz about it in the Blogosphere. Questions
still remain, like how will lag be dealt with. Well, the plan is for
OnLive to have several large server farms scattered around the country
to distribute user traffic, and the video compression technology
they've developed can deliver 60 frame per second video in real time
(resolution is determined by how much bandwidth s available). There's
also the question of ISPs with service caps, but that could be
overcome with special contractual deals with those ISPs. There is
also the Broadband Stimulus package which has Net Neutrality strings
attached. There are many ways OnLive can get around the problem and
they have the financial and industry backing to make such deals
possible. If successful, gaming will never be the same but this won't
mean the end of traditional consoles nor the end of traditional
gaming. Those markets still have their niche audience, but this would
open the door for others who don't have the hardware to run the best
games like Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3 or Call of Duty 4. It also
opens the door for developers to make games that exceed the
capabilities of even the highest end most extreme hardcore gaming
systems available as exclusive titles for OnLive. This technology
could also open the door for True Cloud Computing, making it possible
for someone to just have a small box, a display, mouse and keyboard
and speakers and all of the processing power is handled by a remote
server or even a server in your home. Imagine now having to have a
computer in every room but just one very powerful computer with
graphical terminals. As someone who intimately understands this stuff
I see immense potential here.

Anyway, that is how much the Internet is changing thing. Its not me
just blaming the Internet though its become a convenient scapegoat for
a lot of people. There was child pornography long long long before
the Internet was open to the public, and so many other things people
rant, rave and b@tch & moan about existed long before the Internet and
were accessible to anyone if they knew where to look. The Internet is
not to blame for anything, its the people who use it for nefarious
purposes that are the problem and not the medium itself. For all the
bad things on the Internet, they are overwhelmed by all of the good
that has come from the Internet. It brings people together in ways
never before possible, allowing the free exchange of ideas and
expression that is unprecedented in human history. Everything has its
Dark Side, but you shouldn't condemn something because of the actions
of a few idiots.

--
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
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