Throwback Thursday

Twenty years ago, Napster introduced the world to unlimited file-sharing — and the music business has never been the same since.

Thirteen years ago today, Toshiba introduced the first HD DVD players in U.S. stores with high hopes that the new format would be the high-definition successor to the wildly popular DVD and conquer the rival Blu-ray format championed by a coalition of nine companies, including Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, and Samsung.

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.

Super Bowl XXXIV is historic not only because it is the Ram’s one and only Super Bowl triumph, but because it marked the first time the Super Bowl was broadcast in glorious high-definition…

The video cassette recorder (VCR) seems quaint today but 35 years ago today the Supreme Court handed down a landmark 5-4 decision that upheld the consumer’s right to record TV shows (and ultimately other video content) for personal use — a “right” we take for granted.

A momentous occasion in the evolution of recorded music occurred 20 years ago when a California district court ruled to allow the sale of a curious new portable music player in the face of opposition from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Here’s a compressed history of the events surrounding the birth of the MP3 player.

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.