9781422277362

W ith the growth of the internet and increased bandwidth, companies saw that they could offer entertainment to consumers through their computers. In the early 1990s, consumers could download some entertainment onto their computers. But they couldn’t watch live sporting or music events as they happened, and their choices were limited. Watching movies at home still meant going to the video store to buy or rent a videotape. People had been watching movies that way since the 1970s. Some videodiscs were available, but few people had the players. In 1995, several companies introduced a new disc format, the digital videodisc (DVD), but it would take several years for it to become popular. Even before the introduction of the DVD, computer engineers were trying to perfect the streaming of video and music. This would let WORDS TO UNDERSTAND algorithm  a set of steps a computer program follows to solve a problem or perform a certain task broadband  the fastest internet connection available to most homes, usually offered through a cable TV service compress  shrink in size decompress  return something that has been compressed to its original size download  take information on the internet and store it on a computer

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