Home Entertainment Boosted by Technology
Can you recall when the world wide web was reserved for men with beards and other types of people who thought ‘fun’ meant waiting six hours to read a website about old kettle components? Well all that is history, because fortunately “normal” people have made them a minority pursuit. Millions of people, now have adequate internet access, are taking to the internet as a primary source of entertainment.
You might remember that not so long ago video technology for the internet was a distant dream, but today websites that host video are household names and created innumerable fads and trends. Whether you’re looking for a step-by-step online tutorial to show you how to mend a 1977 Austin Allegro, or just want to laugh at cats falling in swimming pools, video streaming has become a destination in itself.
But it’s not just amateurs who are in on the act. If you like ’proper’ TV entertainment even the likes of the BBC pulling in viewers through their own media player. UK users can watch BBC TV for free on their computer. Meanwhile, other sites offer more specific kinds of content: joost.com share bizarre 70s action movies and other peculiar stuff alongside syndicated shows from the likes of Derren Brown.
Increasingly popular and big-bucks entertainments include online gambling. Poker is perfectly suited to web technology and got first-mover-advantage. It is now the most popular kind of online gambling. Because of restrictions on gambling in some countries, the operators seek to base their gaming systems in more tolerant locations. In most cases this keeps things legal because the actual gambling is outside the jurisdiction of local laws. Dozens of alternative to poker havefollowed suit – online bingo has proven to be massive, particularly among women who seem less inclined to the likes of poker.
Another wildly popular pastime on the internet is everyone’s favourite: the argument! Hop onto any forum, blog or messageboard and you can find a rare old dust-up going on about something as trivial as Joss Stone’s accent. It might seem odd but the internet swarms with people for whom arguing about about the correct way to feed carrots is just the peachiest way to spend their weekend.
The internet has also created entirely new categories of entertainment that previously didn’t exist. Sites like Second Life allow people to lead virtual lives in virtal gaming environments with millions of other people in real time. More popular still are sites such as Facebook which have a raft of inline games which can be played for fun or even money against friends and family. More scurrilously, other sites encourage users to compare the relative attractiveness of strangers
Once this was the stuff of science fiction, but it has become a natural part of our contemporary lives.
