YouTube launched in 2005. Prior to that it was very difficult to share video on the internet, and video streaming was almost nonexistent. Yes, there was RealPlayer streaming, but nobody offered this capability for free.
The way people used to share videos before YouTube was to manually share static video files via email, newsgroups and websites. An example of this, BADDAY.MPG, is shown at right. That video is pre-YouTube era and to this day never fails at being funny. There was even debate at the time whether the video was real or not. It’s obviously fake given the keyboard isn’t even plugged in. However that still doesn’t take away from the fact it’s hilarious.
To actually render video to a file prior to 2005 was not easy. You have to remember that this was a time when everyone was still recording everything on camcorders using DV cassettes. The video had to be recorded from the camcorder, re-recorded into the PC or Mac, then rendered to a file (which took a long time to do back then).
The picture quality of video content was very low in the pre-YouTube era. Most video files shared throughout the internet were either 160×120 or 320×240, usually with a frame rate of under 15 frames per second, highly compressed and had a notably “washy” picture. But that’s the way things were back then.
It is interesting to note that in the history of online video sharing, no other site has put up any real competition to YouTube. Sure, sites like DailyMotion, MetaCafe, Blip.tv are still around, alive and well, but when you think “internet video”, YouTube is the first site that comes to mind.
Will YouTube ever be knocked out of the top position? Time will tell.
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