Few tech companies have achieved that coveted level of fame and notoriety that leads to the verbalization (in this case the becoming of a verb, rather than the verbalizing of) a company name. We no longer “search the Web”; we “Google”. In many cities, it’s just a common to “call for an Uber” than a cab. Since its inception as a video-rental by mail operation, Netflix has blossomed in to an industry leader in home-streaming as well as the legitimate producer of high quality entertainment itself.
For the last decade Netflix has focused on the home-streaming market, a market that when Netflix almost invented it in 2007 was such a niche and hitherto unexplored method of content delivery that it had not yet occurred to anyone to marry the two. Netflix rose from its modest roots in delivering DVD rentals to people’s front doors to delivering video content in to people’s homes over the internet and on to a variety of devices. The seismic shifts in the landscape resulting from Netflix’s sudden and dramatic reshaping of it have had a profound effect on movies themselves as well as the platforms through which they are delivered to consumers.
Truly On Demand
Initially, services like Netflix who operated DVD rental by mail would advertise the service as ‘on-demand’ and it could have been given the current technological limitations, but there were often long delays between ordering and receiving a film, particularly in the more rural parts of the United States. As internet speeds steadily increased throughout the early 21st century, the percentage of internet owners with packages capable of delivering feature length films on demand grew and grew. The advent of the technology itself was entirely predictable, the media applications for ever higher bandwidth data streaming had been a topic of discussion for quite some time.
In 2016, Disney released a princess movie in which the main character did not have a love interest. It was a first for Disney. Auli'i Cravalho, a Hawaiian native, voiced the 16-year old Polynesian princess and most the film’s cast also had Polynesian heritage, another monumental moment in movie history. It’s quite possible that you missed the awesome animation of the water because the storyline was so well-developed.
