Throwback Thursday

Stop for a moment and try to remember life before the Internet. Typewriters. Trips to the library. Looking stuff up in the Yellow Pages. A different world, right?

Twenty years ago this month Twister took home entertainment by storm when it became the first Hollywood feature film to be released on DVD. The disc went on to become top-selling DVD in 1997.

Twenty-two years ago this month, Silicon Valley startup WebTV made a noble effort to bring the internet to the big screen with the launch of a set-top box that connected any TV to the internet. Noble because the World Wide Web was a wide-open frontier with only 36 million users worldwide. (Today, more than 4 billion people are online.) A good 92% of the American public had yet to even experience the internet let alone think about searching the web on their TV. Oh, and internet access in those days was via a “dial-up” phone connection.

Twenty-two years ago this week, the first DVD players were introduced in the U.S. after numerous false starts and delays over copyright concerns raised by Hollywood movie studios. DVD offered an upgrade in picture quality over VHS tape plus the convenience of a CD-like disc that wasn’t prone to wear and made it quick and easy to navigate through content, putting an end to tedious rewinding and fast-forwarding.

Twenty years ago this month, the first DVD players were introduced in the U.S. after numerous false starts and delays over copyright concerns raised by Hollywood movie studios. DVD offered better picture quality than VHS tape plus the convenience of a CD-like disc that wasn’t prone to wear.

When the romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail opened in theaters 18 years ago this week, the Internet was crossing over into the mainstream—as evidenced by the movie’s title, borrowed from AOL’s iconic email notification “voice.”