Tuesday, February 26, 2008
10:02 by FoxTwo
Remember, back then, broadband speeds were just like about 512Kbps to 1Mps at most. DivX was released, and for the first time, videos can be compressed with it like songs can be compressed into MP3s. Finally, videos can be shared among friends because the files no longer need to be 500MBs or more. To give you an example - a raw capture video file of about 2 minutes might take up 2GBs of harddisk space. DivX can easily compress it down to about 20MBs without much loss of quality. In other words, the 20MB version will look very close to the original 2GB version.
That was indeed a breakthrough.
Video sharing sites started to sprout up. Youtube was among the first, and is now the most popular of all. However, to "stream" videos, the files needed to be even smaller (remember, broadband speeds were slow back then), so Youtube compressed it further, and resized it downwards. While videos might look blocky and blurry on Youtube, users are impressed because we can now watch live, streaming videos.
Stage6 was a brainchild of DivX actually. They wanted to prove a point back then - that it was possible to stream videos in high-quality, using their own DivX codec. Slowly but surely, it started to gain popularity, because yes, it was indeed possible to stream high-quality videos over the Internet.
The second thing that made it popular was that you can DOWNLOAD the videos off the site onto your harddisk, and play it back with your standard Windows Media Player if you choose to.
The third thing is, Stage6 is the place for me to go if I wanted to watch a TV series that isn't shown in Singapore - like Andromeda, Stargate Atlantis, Farscape etc (yes I know, it's all sci-fi series listed here). You can find contemporary shows there too like Lost, Prison Break, West Wing etc too.
All in "high-definition".
Before even "high-def" TVs were even heard of by most Singaporeans.
And, unlike Youtube (yes, don't be surprised. These shows are available via Youtube too), they aren't blocky, or pixellated, and NOT broken down into 10 minute parts (unlike Youtube's weird policy), ie, no need to watch "1 of 4" then search for the same episode part 2 of 4 etc to continue the show.
Fast forward 5 or 6 years to present day. This morning I just got an email from Stage6, where they announced they are going to shut down the service effective 28 Feb 2008 (yes you read it right, 28 Feb 2008, not 29 Feb). To me, it's an end of an era.
Here's an excerpt from the email:
Yes, Stage6 is free. It doesn't have advertising. It's only a matter of time before the service shuts down. I am only amazed it lasted this long without external sources of funding. In the meantime, I have been enjoying TV series like Lexx on Stage6 in "high-definition" in the past few years.
Thank you Stage6, for all the good times.
Now, I guess I have Vimeo, which can also stream in high-quality. It's not as popular as Youtube, but then again, this post isn't about Youtube or Vimeo.
10:02 by FoxTwo
Pioneer Video Sharing Site Stage6 To Shut Down
Remember, back then, broadband speeds were just like about 512Kbps to 1Mps at most. DivX was released, and for the first time, videos can be compressed with it like songs can be compressed into MP3s. Finally, videos can be shared among friends because the files no longer need to be 500MBs or more. To give you an example - a raw capture video file of about 2 minutes might take up 2GBs of harddisk space. DivX can easily compress it down to about 20MBs without much loss of quality. In other words, the 20MB version will look very close to the original 2GB version.
That was indeed a breakthrough.
Video sharing sites started to sprout up. Youtube was among the first, and is now the most popular of all. However, to "stream" videos, the files needed to be even smaller (remember, broadband speeds were slow back then), so Youtube compressed it further, and resized it downwards. While videos might look blocky and blurry on Youtube, users are impressed because we can now watch live, streaming videos.
Stage6 was a brainchild of DivX actually. They wanted to prove a point back then - that it was possible to stream videos in high-quality, using their own DivX codec. Slowly but surely, it started to gain popularity, because yes, it was indeed possible to stream high-quality videos over the Internet.
The second thing that made it popular was that you can DOWNLOAD the videos off the site onto your harddisk, and play it back with your standard Windows Media Player if you choose to.
The third thing is, Stage6 is the place for me to go if I wanted to watch a TV series that isn't shown in Singapore - like Andromeda, Stargate Atlantis, Farscape etc (yes I know, it's all sci-fi series listed here). You can find contemporary shows there too like Lost, Prison Break, West Wing etc too.
All in "high-definition".
Before even "high-def" TVs were even heard of by most Singaporeans.
And, unlike Youtube (yes, don't be surprised. These shows are available via Youtube too), they aren't blocky, or pixellated, and NOT broken down into 10 minute parts (unlike Youtube's weird policy), ie, no need to watch "1 of 4" then search for the same episode part 2 of 4 etc to continue the show.
Fast forward 5 or 6 years to present day. This morning I just got an email from Stage6, where they announced they are going to shut down the service effective 28 Feb 2008 (yes you read it right, 28 Feb 2008, not 29 Feb). To me, it's an end of an era.
Here's an excerpt from the email:
As Stage6 grew quickly and dramatically (accompanied by an explosion of other sites delivering high-quality video), it became clear that operating the service as a part of the larger DivX business no longer made sense. We couldn't continue to run Stage6 and focus on our broader strategy to make it possible for anyone to enjoy high-quality video on any device. So, in July of last year we announced that we were kicking off an effort to explore strategic alternatives for Stage6, which is a fancy way of saying we decided we would either have to sell it, spin it out into a private company or shut it down.
Yes, Stage6 is free. It doesn't have advertising. It's only a matter of time before the service shuts down. I am only amazed it lasted this long without external sources of funding. In the meantime, I have been enjoying TV series like Lexx on Stage6 in "high-definition" in the past few years.
Thank you Stage6, for all the good times.
Now, I guess I have Vimeo, which can also stream in high-quality. It's not as popular as Youtube, but then again, this post isn't about Youtube or Vimeo.
