People of certain ages may talk with a misty-eyed reverence about the golden age television. A time when people truly believed that with all the TV networks at our disposal and video stores on every street corner, things couldn’t get any better. It did, in fact, get much better.
Entertainment options available now are nothing short of amazing. It’s possible to do things people couldn’t even imagine back then.
Streaming
Let’s start with the big one — streaming. We believed nothing could end the worldwide industry of video rentals in the 2000s. There was no doubt that VHS tapes were being replaced by DVDs, and Blu Ray discs could soon replace them. Did we really think that eventually there wouldn’t be any video stores? Apart from Blockbuster #8 That is.
The entertainment business has changed dramatically since the advent of video streaming, and Netflix is a small company that specializes in it. Streaming brings everything to our homes, including the most current movies and TV shows. It’s even allowed us to enjoy the sports that we love more than we thought. Netflix has a total of 2.2 million subscribers. 220,000,000 subscribers Amazon Prime is the nearest rival with just more than 200 millions. And they’re just two players in an ever-expanding market.
Gaming
Many nostalgic people still long for DonkeyKong, Mario, and the days when consoles had wired controllers. But it’s never more than a fleeting thought as the gaming industry is simply unstoppable right now. Gaming has never been more fun or easier, from MMORPG games to Apple Arcade.
Just think of any game you want to play and you will be able to download it directly to your mobile device or access it from your console or PC. The casino industry is also getting in on this trend, with poker, blackjack and roulette just a few of the many. Online casino games. Live dealer games are available that use the most recent gaming technology and live streaming from actual dealers who are running the game.
Metaverse is set to offer a host of exciting new possibilities for players and developers.
Musik
Spotify may not be to everyone’s tastes, but there’s no doubt that like Netflix, the music streaming platform changed how we listen to music forever. Gone are the days of queuing outside a record store to buy an album on its release date — which is actually a shame.
However, it’s a different experience to be able to hear an entire album right away. Anyone with an internet connection can instantly access music thanks to Spotify, Tidal and Google Music.
Music streaming also has an unanticipated benefit. This has enabled many people to rediscover music they have never heard before and to listen to different genres we wouldn’t otherwise be able to hear.
All your options
You may recall a time when entertainment options were limited to a few channels, VHS tapes and an old video game console. What a time to be alive that was and let’s face it, we thought we had it good.
These days though, there’s almost too much high quality content and gaming options to choose from. Netflix offers approximately 3800 movies, 1,500 TV shows and 180 video games. Apple Arcade. And that’s only two of your many many options. Back in the 1990s you were lucky if you had control of the remote, nowadays you’re in control of everything on pretty much any device of your choosing.
So to answer the question ‘is this the golden age of entertainment?’ we’d have to say yes. But that’s only because we haven’t seen what the future holds for us yet.
