I’ve noticed that I’ve developed a new habit thanks to the Watch Instantly featue from Netflix. Now that I can log in and immediately watch a growing number of movies, I find myself bringing up favorite titles and scrolling through to a favorite scene as a quick pick-me-up throughout the day. My current guilty pleasure is Down Periscope.
In the days of VHS tapes, fast forwarding or rewinding to a favorite part not only took time, but it put a lot of wear and tear on the tape itself. DVDs helped in that you could instantly load a particular scene, but still required you to not only own the movie, but to go through the physical process of locating the disc and inserting it into your player. That’s all changed in the age of streaming media.
As more of our media starts streaming in from the cloud rather from discs in our CD, DVD or Blu-ray players, I’m starting to wonder what other consumption habits will change. With Napster allowing me to listen to just about any song I can think of nearly instantly, I’ve certainly found that my listening habits have become very scatter-shot when it comes to bands and genres.