The industry's reaction to EA's surrender was, naturally, one of immense condemnation. However, after the outcry, other companies began to terminate their agreements with the oo game center. If EA, a seemingly upright entity, had capitulated, then what was to stop the shadier ones from doing the same?
It was therefore anticipated that the oo game center would soon be filled with games from major studios.
Ahem, it seems I've strayed off-topic a bit. Let's get back to the matter at hand.
After playing for a while, Brook's Zhongmi phone rang. He glanced down and saw it was a guildmate from World of Warcraft.
Brook then remembered that today was the day the guild had agreed to tackle the new raid, Molten Hell. He absolutely had to go online now.
With a nervous flutter in his stomach, Brook logged into World of Warcraft. He then casually found a few wild monsters to test his connection, and found that his internet speed seemed unaffected.
Brook also curiously looked at his wife, who was watching television, and saw that she was still watching the sitcom Growing Pains.
"It doesn't seem to be using much bandwidth!" Brook muttered. He remembered a time when he tried to play games while watching videos, which caused even simple gathering quests to repeatedly disconnect. It was a truly unbearable memory.
Now, his wife watching videos on the TV without any issues was truly miraculous.
Brook didn't know it, but this was actually the result of about half a year of dedicated technical research by the Jiangnan Group's technical team.
After setting his five small goals, Huang He had been preparing for the future era of online cultural streaming. Although the acquisition of Los Gatos Television might have seemed like a spontaneous decision, it was actually something that had been planned by Boss Huang for a long time.
As a latecomer, Huang He was acutely aware that in the future, digital on-demand television platforms would completely replace traditional television stations. While these stations might still exist, they would only be able to do so by relying on digital on-demand television platforms. This was an inevitable trend in future development.
And Huang He certainly wasn't going to miss this opportunity. He had to seize this trend. This was why Huang He had made an early move to acquire Netflix. Netflix already possessed a network woven throughout the entire United States and owned a vast amount of television program resources. Huang He could leverage this network and these resources to quickly expand his operations worldwide.
Of course, according to Huang He's original plan, Netflix would gradually transition from a disc rental company to a professional video website, and then from a streaming video website to a digital television station, publicly selling digital television boxes to the world, thereby completing the spread and control from the internet to television media.
Therefore, as early as half a year ago, Huang He had instructed his subordinates to begin dedicated research and development on digital network television technology. Some might think that this technology didn't need R&D, that it was simply a function of watching videos online, and that it would be enough to slightly modify the technology of a browser and transfer it to a TV box.
However, the reality was quite the opposite. Professional digital network television technology and online video technology were fundamentally different. While online video technology was currently mature, the problem was that such technology consumed a vast amount of network traffic and had high speed requirements.
These speed requirements were not a problem in 2022, as advanced broadband networks could perfectly meet them. However, the internet in 2005 absolutely could not meet the video traffic demands of television quality.
And have you all noticed that in the early 2000s, videos watched on a computer would always lag? But if you watched a television station on a TV, unless there was a problem with the station itself, there would never be any stuttering.
The difference between these two is complex in some ways, and simple in others... Simply put, all televisions receive the same television signal, but each computer requires entirely different data. This results in very stable television signals, but very laggy internet speeds.
This problem had to be solved if one wanted to achieve digital television using the internet!
Thus, the team under Jiangnan Group began the dedicated technical R&D for the internet. With Boss Huang's reminder, the entire team quickly settled on the approach of using a specialized decoding chip combined with specialized compression technology.
Specialized video compression technology is a type of compression that reduces video content through techniques such as frame dropping, resolution reduction, and code simplification, thereby shrinking the overall size of the video. This also ensures that it can be transmitted stably at a consistent speed during network transmission.
This compression technology could reduce a 100MB video file to about 20MB, a reduction of 1/5th of its original size. Currently, this technology is still under development, and it is said that in the future it will be able to reduce it to only about 10MB.
However, video files compressed in this way could not be played normally on other devices. Only through the specialized video decoding chip developed by Jiangnan Group itself… this chip is remarkable. Not only can it decode, but it can also automatically补帧 (re-insert frames) and, according to preset logic rules, automatically re-add the code that was cut out.
It would then transform the video that was reduced from 100MB to 20MB back to its original 100MB size.
This is somewhat similar to AI technology that removes mosaic blurs, capable of re-rendering images where parts were obscured by mosaics.
Or it's like face-swapping technology, which can replace the face of a celebrity in a video with another face.
Of course, this technology is still in its early stages and can only perform inverse filling of content based on pre-set logic and rules.
That's about the gist of it. Writing any more would only make it more confusing. In any case, with this technology, as long as the internet itself doesn't experience fluctuations, then given the network conditions in the United States, there would essentially be no video lag or significant impact on internet speeds.
Well, Brook was naturally unaware of all these intricate details.
But none of that mattered. The raid was more important. For the next day and a half, Brook was immersed in the dungeon. After wiping multiple times, he had managed to grasp some techniques for clearing the dungeon. The team then agreed to try again tomorrow. Brook stretched, got up from his chair, and curiously looked at his wife. He found her still sitting in front of the television, watching Growing Pains.
"What's going on? Didn't they only broadcast two episodes of the series?" Brook asked, confused.
"My dearest darling, let me tell you, this television station is absolutely amazing! It continuously broadcasts one sitcom, and there are no commercials in between the episodes. They only play one Zhongmi phone advertisement between two sitcoms, and then they continue with a new episode. This television station is truly incredible, I love it to death!" Rosa said excitedly.
"As long as you're happy!" Brook was also happy to see this situation. Although his wife usually monopolized the TV, she only enjoyed watching dramas. She never watched variety shows or news programs. So, for half of the day, he couldn't watch his favorite TV programs, and during that time, she would naturally entertain herself.
So, Brook continued to dominate in World of Warcraft until 2:00 AM. Suddenly, Brook felt a wave of exhaustion. Most of his friends had also logged off. He yawned, got up, and went to the bedroom to sleep. He found the bedroom empty.
Normally, his wife would be asleep in bed by this time.
Brook had no choice but to return to the living room. As expected, he found his silly wife still sitting on the sofa, watching television, and it was still Growing Pains.
Good heavens, this sitcom really didn't stop!
"Sleep!" Brook playfully grabbed Rosa.
"Get off! Don't bother me!" Rosa pushed Brook away. This annoyed him. He remembered what Rosa had done to him when he was playing on his computer, so he unhesitatingly scooped up his wife and tossed her onto the bed.
What followed was naturally an all-night affair until dawn. They both slept until around 10 AM. Brook and his wife almost simultaneously climbed out of bed. Rosa quickly washed up and then rushed back to the living room to turn on Los Gatos Television.
The good news was that the station was still broadcasting Growing Pains. But the bad news was that it was now an unknown number of episodes in.
"It's all your fault, you scoundrel, for making me miss so many episodes! Many of them are ones I've never seen before!" Rosa angrily waved her fists at her husband. Brook couldn't possibly hit his wife, so he could only obediently take the beating.
Suddenly, Brook remembered a feature he had seen yesterday while operating the TV box. He quickly said, "Wait, I remember this TV box seems to have a replay function. Maybe you can still watch the programs you missed!"