The Computer Chronicles - Faster Net Access (2000)

Special thanks to archive.org for hosting these episodes. Downloads of all these episodes and more can be found at: archive.org/details/computerch...

[@uctqmpe]

It is 23 years later now and I have just discovered this show and I still find all of it interesting …

[@9852323]

I love computer Chronicles. I wish they still made this show.

[@alexklein455]

Same

[@spearPYN]

The computers died around when they introduced widescreen LCD screens, "antialiased" fonts and other bull that made computers just another appliance. I am still using CRT monitors and play old games.

[@SpaceManRD]

@@spearPYN ...what do large screens and antialiased fonts have to do with anything? They've always been an "appliance", early PCs probably moreso than nowadays, being primarily used for things like accounting and programming. One per house, no internet, nor much music or video to speak of, and very simple games. And you're probably going to want one of those bigger screens when your eyesight starts to go and/or you get bored of putting your face five inches away from it. These things have utility for people who aren't you, don't be a bitter old ass about it.

[@GouShin1]

The info would be the same as any tech channel out today, I think CC could have lived until maybe even recently as 2015.

[@doloresdebeauvoir4960]

I assume it's because Stewart retired.

[@afnDavid]

Here it is 2022 and xDSL is still the only wired option for I. Using copper that has been in the ground 50 to 80 yrs. When they rainy season comes around then the wires get wet and connections drop.

[@awarepenguin3376]

RIP hope you get fiber my man.

[@SikoSoft]

I was one of the lucky ones who had a cable modem... 4 years before this was filmed in 96. My dad was a long time computer user. We were one of the first to have a 5Mb/s cable connection, which was shared, but since no one was on it by then, we had blazing fast internet all the time.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

That must have been absolutely incredible in 1996. And expensive.

[@coolspot18]

@@gregorymalchuk272 Same, I was all hyped up on Internet back in the mid-90s... and we got @Home Cable Internet in Toronto around 97ish - price was surprisingly affordable, likely because the cable company (Trillium / Shaw) was trying to push it to as many households as possible ($55 a month? Considering dial up was $29.99 plus overage fees and a phone line, it wasn't too bad). Then again, my parents paid, so perhaps it is not as "affordable" as I remember it. But I do remember how fast it was - switching from 33.6kbps to 10mbit/s cable was life changing.

[@masterkc]

Wow you guys were lucky.surely you guys had download limits back then like 1 gb a month lol

[@____0____]

My cousin got a 3Mb/s connection in 1999 as well and I used to visit most weekends from Friday night to sunday night with my PC. He was older and installed a second NIC in his PC to share the internet with some network settings. I spent 12+hours every day playing HLDM, TFC, CS. I first started with Quake 3 BETA.

[@JaredConnell]

I first got a cable modem in probably about 2000. We were one of the first few houses in the city to get it, and it was only 512kbps speed but coming from dial up, it was blazingly fast! My parents got it as a Christmas gift for me but I saw the blinking lights behind my computer desk and found out what it was a few days early lol

[@jblyon2]

We got cable in 2002 from Adelphia (later bought by Comcast). We had been waiting for DSL and then the phone company stated they had no future plans to service the area with DSL. We thought we'd be stuck with the measly 26.4k dial-up that the old rural lines could barely manage. It was so slow we had a second phone line just so you could accomplish a download without tying up the phone for hours. Adelphia came through unexpectedly and we all started signing up. I don't know the initial speed advertised, but we were all getting 2.7 meg consistently. Going from 26.4k to 2.7 meg was amazing. 18 years later and I'm sitting here with gigabit FiOS which, adjusted for inflation, is cheaper than the initial cable service. Hard to imagine where we'll be another 18 years from now.

[@ytscksdabig1]

Kids these days will never understand the glory of catching a 44k or a 48k connection out of your 56k modem instead of the usual 28-35 you usually connected with.

[@jblyon2]

@youtubesucksthebigone Yes! Every once in a blue moon we'd get a low 30s connection. I don't remember the specific number, but it was below the 33.6k standard. When that happened we kept it connected as long as possible, as it could be a year or more before we saw it again!

[@DanielBurapavong]

One of my favorite episodes of the Computer Chronicles. Brings back memories. I had Telocity and that same modem.

[@kenkobra]

It great to watch these old shows and see what really took off and what didn't.

[@pauldavis5665]

I remember getting a cable modem for the first time back in like 2000 or 2001 and was amazed at how much faster it was than dial-up. I also loved how it was always on and you didn't have to wait for the dialing in process to complete to access the internet and it didn't randomly disconnect like dial-up always used to do. When I finally got that cable modem I remember spending so much more time on the internet and rarely watched TV anymore.

[@hang10wannabe]

Never used Opera, but man, I remember when AOL DSL came to my area... that was mind-blowing how much faster AOL DSL was to Dial-Up. Love watching Computer Chronicles.

[@JasonGravesPoser]

17:55 what a headline lol

[@Nunavuter1]

I got 1-megabit DSL in November 1999 for about $40/month. What a change that was. I started spending more time on the internet than watching TV.

[@imperiumcommentingnetwork4677]

i remember going from dsl to fibre (we've lived in small towns mostly) I also remember the difference between our dsl and dial up at grandma's farm. dsl to a 340/300mbps connection felt incredible. Dial up to dsl was noticable.

[@CommodoreFan64]

I'm watching this in 2020, and sadly there are still parts of the rural Southeastern US that still can't get any kind of highspeed landline access, and some can't even get a POTS line ran to their home for 56K dialup, ISDN, or DSL. 🤬

[@hypercube33]

I feel you. Grew up in the same situation. Fiber was two miles down the road and we later found out 5 years after badgering the phone company by pulling over and talking to a tech that we had DSL capability for years but no one wanted to turn it on. Unreal. Here is hoping that SpaceX kicks the telecoms and ISPs in the crotch hard enough to wake them up and improve the wired networks around the country - thats at least what I'm hoping starlink can do and then they can deorbit them after the world is a better place. Realistically we're probably still screwed.

[@CommodoreFan64]

@@hypercube33 Yep, It was not till 2007 when my small town here in S. Carolina got copper cable internet with AtlanticBB, yet in the 90's my uncle worked for SoutherBell which later on became Bell South, and Bell Atlantic, and just outside my small town is SRS Nuclear Site where they use to make the warheads for meany bombs, and ICBM's used in the cold war, and my uncle was one of the ones helping to lay fiber optic lines all over that place, and many other parts of the south east, and there are is still thousands of mile of it that have never been used, or are accessible to the general public, and remain dark fiber. My girlfriend who lives about 2 hours(we would live closer but my house is paid for, I have an essential job ATM, and I take care of my elder mother, and she plans to move when things improve globally) from me just outside of Vidalla GA is in the boat of not being able to get any land based lines to her farm, and 10 minutes down the road at her mother's place they have Comcast with 100Mbs down, and I have no doubt she had at the very least copper going right by her place that can do Gigabit to her house. So yeah I hope something happens soon the shake them up, but with how things have been for the past 4 decades I'm not holding my breath.

[@coolspot18]

Damn, I remember getting @Home Cable Internet in 1997 or 1998 in Toronto, surfing at 10mbps while the rest of the world was on 33.6 or 56K, it was glorious.

[@johnalbertson79]

Can't have it both ways. If you choose to live in the back woods you can expect the modern world to cater to you.

[@CommodoreFan64]

@@johnalbertson79 So people who choose not to live like sheep, and cattle in a large city of millions, but instead of a smaller town of a few hundred to a thousand should be left out, and left behind? No I refuse to except that for those people, and thankfully we finally have companies starting to step up like Elon Musk with Starlink who are stepping up to provide them with service, proving it can can be done, is being done, and will be done.

[@iamtheliquor809]

LGR should do an episode on that pool gadget!!

[@Lilbroda]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/oZCbnWaoncqBjZI

[@mohdwahidi]

Bring back this series in 2021

[@SureshotCyclonus]

“Nobody is running websites out of their basement…” No comment.

[@jcherrera104]

That one guy must of loved windows 95 wallpaper so much that he bought the polo version LOL

[@pauleckert4321]

Man if Stewart and Huewll Howser ever talked to each other it would be an epic battle of who could interrupt each other the most. It would be a never ending battle. Haha. In all seriousness though loved both hosts and it always amused me how they both had no issues interrupting their guest. I get it that it was a time thing, but i have seen some guest on both show get frustrated in the past. 😂

[@marktucker208]

That satellite internet looks great, I’m getting me some

[@steinravnik8692]

Living in Huntsville, AL my buddy was the first to get high speed internet with DSL at 1.5MB in summer 1999. He lived within a mile of the phone company switching station, which was a requirement back then to get the highest speed. Excite @Home through Comcast became available in summer 2000 at my place. I was the very first customer in my neighborhood. I got the full speed unrestricted at around 6MB. They later throttled it down to 1.5MB as more signed on. Game changer switching from dial up. I hosted an Unreal Tournament server. Fun times.

[@jacobbaranowski]

hear it dilup...I remember that sound...it took 30 minits to uplode a page

[@steven-vn9ui]

Great to see the huge leaps mde back then.

[@kxmode]

I also liked The Screen Savers. Both this show and that show were excellent!

[@imperiumcommentingnetwork4677]

My grandma had dial up a few years back, i remember how painful checking the weather was.

[@CommodoreFan64]

My area had dial-up all the way till 08, and I had to pay for 2 phones lines just to make that work, and it was indeed a pain in the ass, but I know people still in 2021 who can't get anything in their area beyond cellular data for high speed as Hughesnet is a joke, and StarLink is not available to them yet.

[@lewds8551]

The thought that I can sit down at my PC, run a speedtest and bring down 1000 meg and push up 1000 meg blows my mind in comparison to what it was like 20 years ago. Upgrades, people, upgrades!

[@9852323]

I’ve still got 6meg. most other people I know have 100meg in my area.

[@BlownMacTruck]

They could download and upload 1000 megs back then too. That’s not speed, that’s size.

[@floydjohnson7888]

It may be interesting to compare and contrast a circa-2000 episode of "The Computer Chronicles" with an episode of the cable series, "The Screen Savers", from about the same time.

[@albundy7718]

Only 20 Years ago xDSL became the Internet Standard. Before that you had to dail-in with a 56 Kbit Modem and the used Phone-line was occupied during Internet Access.

[@mattpowell8369]

Whats really crazy is that DSL is running down the same cable... we used to struggle getting 2400 baud down that wire, thats 230 CHARACTERS per second.. and we are now getting 40mbits down the same cable, plus the voice calls simultaneously. Pretty amazing!

[@bluered1322]

RealPlayer 😆 it's been a while since I've seen that running

[@infinitecanadian]

You can still get it.

[@kevin9c1]

Somehow I convinced my dad in 1997 to switch to cable modem service (@Home) and somehow we lived in an area that made it available so early. It was like living in the future in some ways. Although being connected to the internet with zero firewall and such high speeds was kind of crazy when you think back...

[@TrainThings]

Will we really be able to watch videos on the internet in the future? Absolutely amazing! Oh, wait...

[@CloneShockTrooper]

Fun to see how fast internet progress from then to until now.

[@Psythik]

And how backwards we've gone. I wish we still had that "Kapernick" program that searches every search engine and organizes the results.

[@wallacelang1374]

It was interesting to see what various methods of internet connections had been available back in the year 2000. I had a DSL Router that I bought from the phone company after the local internet companies chose to end their dial up phone connections.

[@sergheiadrian]

That guy talks slower than IE loads pages.

[@CastleKnight7]

And I like it.

[@thekhakiobserver3128]

It’s funny they offer a parallel port connection which topped off at 150kbs in this time. Also cable internet connections outpaced the performance of many home computers.

[@thekhakiobserver3128]

Wow…it’s crazy to see all those old search engines and no Google.

[@popcornfps]

DSL was a game changer for me 😁

[@jaworskij]

The sound is too quiet in this episode. Needs a touch of Audio Gain.

[@ruthlessluder]

Can't get over how much Stewart interrupts his guests. Let them talk!

[@chrislopez1391]

it can definitely get annoying, but more than not the guest is just stumbling over words and not really introducing their product very well to the everyday PC user. he helps get the point across to the audience by doing that, though I wish it didn't come to that either. that's not even taking into consideration the time limit they have of course.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

He did not want the sales reps to start drifting from what the product could actually do to getting into sales pitch mode. Such as "This allows the mouse to track your selections better... and by doing so it will revolutionize your life that you'll now be able to save money on spending less downtime". Stewart had enough experience to know where to cut them off. Also the show was a one-take, they did not do any rehearsals or additional takes.

[@SpaceManRD]

The show had been on for 15+ years by this point. They should know the format.

[@mattnordsell9760]

Hearing them talk about opera and how it doesn't use any shared code is so far from now, because it's now a chromium based browser.

[@xXNURBSXx]

Watching this in 2024. :)

[@playingwithtrainerspcmt6407]

I remember those days now I have fiber optics one gig download..nice

[@kamildouglas]

same

[@jolly1039]

Can I plug the dsl gateway to my 10gb switch?

[@jacobbaranowski]

what is this sight Snap? 12:59 is this erly Snap Chat?

[@dylanchadderton1]

I just bought a new 56K modem, any help installing it. I want a fast upgrade from my old 28.8K modem. That thing is a dinosaur!

[@TDGalea]

If only Opera was still the fastest. I hope for a day when they realise how stupid they were with dumping their Presto engine and turning to Chromium. Such a pathetic move.

[@VAX1970]

Enable Turbo mode it makes it much faster

[@Wizardofgosz]

I loved Opera. It was clearly the fastest.

[@CommodoreFan64]

@@odteknology Before Chrome existed, and Opera ran on the Presto engine it was indeed the fastest, I was using it all the way back in the 90's when it was in beta testing, and you had to pay for it, and I had to use my student ID to get a discount, and it made 56K dial-up much more tolerable.

[@Jonny8859]

I know this show isn't on anymore but damn! Stewart, let the man talk jesus christ.

[@Slevin-Kelevra]

In my area the cable internet was techincally faster than DSL. But it was shared. So if nobody was on it was blazing. If everybody was on, not so much. So I went with DSL. Which was very stable & reliable in my area. I was able to get two connections installed. One thru my regular phone line and the second thru a dark line drop. Had a special router that combined both into one. My cable company had a bundle where it was the same price to have the cable. So for awhile I had three connections. Then Fibre came in. That was a huge bump in speed.

[@leew5382]

What about water sports?

[@miguelsandoval8203]

This internet sounds interesting .. I can’t wait for it to be world wide .. I imagine a website where you can order books, or one where you can watch videos , another to stay connected with friends , another where you can watch videos on your phone … just a few a ideas

[@johns4651]

It will never catch up.

[@DanielPierce]

I currently have a page open in Safari that is using 217MB of RAM, I loaded it with a 350Mbps fiber connection, we have come so far in 18 years!!

[@eugrus]

The poor usage of RAM by the modern browsers is not something to be proud of 😁

[@RealHealthyGuidance]

Lol. Where do u live? I got 1 GBPS

[@DanielPierce]

@@RealHealthyGuidance I assume you mean 1Gbps? I had 1Gbps but realized I didn’t need it so I went to 300Mbps, which was recently upgraded to 500Mbps for the same price.

[@bigloudnoise]

Living out in the country, my family had to suffer with dialup for far too long. In 2006 an early WiMax ISP started operating in the nearest town, and we were within range of the transmitter, so we signed up. It was only 256k, which at the time was still considered slow, but wow was it such a major improvement over dialup. It worked very well for the first year or so, and we were even upgraded to 1.5m at no extra charge after the first year. But, as more people signed up for it, the system became overloaded and reliability tanked (50% packet loss became the norm during the last few months we had it). Once DSL finally became available to us in 2008, we switched to that. I've been on DSL ever since then, although I'm now running at a much faster 18mbps since moving into town, with gigabit fiber an option in my new apartment (albeit a very expensive option).

[@blob5907]

haha stupid poor boy

[@musicbreath6757]

Man I think I’ve been through all the internet services. Dialup, DSL, fiber, cable, and those free ones in the early 2000’s. It wasn’t until I got the Verizon cell internet this past fall that I finally felt unshackled. I’m about 1.5 miles or so from the tower and even though I rarely get 4 bars on my phone in my apartment, I’m getting 300 Mbps download. It’s even cheap. Well, for now anyway. The internet connections people have available to them have been neglected far too long. No one should have to wait a quarter of a century to get unrestrictive connections. 🤨

[@liquidalloy]

Watching this on Opera in 2020

[@kamildouglas]

ahhhh yes real player damn i remember that

[@jacobbaranowski]

10 megabits per second wow that is fast

[@NewsBroadcasting]

honestly 10megabits is even good today. u can still do everything you need to do .

[@leigel3]

I feel like he was supposed to swivel the cradle with the cue stick already lodged and then shoot.

[@MrGencyExit64]

Woo! Soon we'll have enough bandwidth to transfer videos over the Internet.

[@i486DX66]

RE: 12:45 - Even DSL loading simple web pages was slow back then.

[@sternkrieger1950]

23:16 - That's just a picture of a satellite dish mounted behind the window on a fake looking sky backdrop. You can even see the graininess and blockiness in the print! 😆

[@9852323]

I’ve got 6 meg it’s torture but only when you download stuff. Streaming is fine surprisingly. Frontier is a joke..

[@richardfeynman5560]

Wow... Advanced Internet Properties menu, can it get any more exciting??

[@clemstevenson]

COOKIES!!!!! The cookie monster's still on the net. The cookie monster came to Britain and ate all the chocolate hobnobs :-)

[@marshallgraphic]

He doesn't let anyone finish their sentence!

[@Redstripe921]

No time for bullshit its a short show

[@johnathanstevens8436]

Google search conspicuously missing from meta search results.

[@kevin9c1]

Here to tell us about browser settings is: everyone's dad.

[@sontodosnarcos]

17:55 McCain: "I can tell who's gay".

[@icanrunat3200mhz]

7:35 oh, how the mighty have fallen.

[@michaelmcconnell7302]

Opera in 2000 😮

[@ADDMEONPSN]

19:34 Left my mans hanging lol

[@tomatobros]

shit I saw copernic 2000 :( first program that could actually search web before google.

[@jacobbaranowski]

cool I want that Pool game and mouse & pool stick 25:59

[@CommodoreFan64]

LGR(Lazy Game Reviews) did a video on it in 2016, and it's honestly not that great, as it's really just a funky mouse, but it does make for a funny video. LGR Oddware - InterAct Pool Shark Pool Cue Controller kzbin.info/www/bejne/oZCbnWaoncqBjZI

[@ExodentalCADAcademyofNorth]

17:52 Well we can tell that some things also change not only internet speed :D have to be careful with public comments

[@thelunchbox420x]

Dial up will never die. That dsl and cable stuff is too expensive. With dial up you just connect, wait for the webpages or downloads, and then disconnect.

[@cubematrixstudio7605]

This guy talked so slow the episode aired in 2000 and finished a week ago.

[@zefallafez]

😁

[@jacobbaranowski]

oh yeah IMDB still up and kiking ass

[@Blake4014]

Its shit since they removed the comments forums from everywhere. I stopped going after that, shame.

[@kevinhoward9593]

LOL I died when he said "a maximum of 10mbps." boy what would he say if I showed him my download speed of 859mbps?

[@carlosap78]

or todays 10Gbps, 10 years from now 1Tbps

[@comson68]

@@carlosap78 Are you sure it's 10 Gbps and not 1 Gbps for home internet? Lol, I must be living in the backwoods then if I didn't know anything about the availability of10 Gbps home internet!

[@carlosap78]

@@comson68 yes 10Gbps (residential), and japan i think they have 100Gbps. 1Gbps is too slow for big 4k video files

[@comson68]

@@carlosap78 Hmmm, if you say so....But since my last post to you I made my own researches to make sure I got my facts right. And I was correct - at least from my side. The highest download speed offered by AT&T, Comcast, Google fiber and the likes maxes out at 1 Gbps for home internet. Things might be different for industrial premises, but I couldn't find any providers offering such blazing speed for home use. I sure would like if you could point out where this is available.

[@carlosap78]

@@comson68 www.utopiafiber.com/10g-info/ $199 its not cheap but its 10gpbs :) , Big ISPs could have 10Gbps right now, but the want to maximize roi, and its another story

[@justinnewton7366]

A cable company, doing internet connections... that's never going to catch on... I'll stick to my dial up internet connection any day...😎😆

[@sologals361]

They charged 35 dollars for a web browser. Holey Poops.

[@asj511]

And now we get everything for "free" while being tracked. Not good.

[@jacobbaranowski]

Direct TV in 2000 20:14

[@viperv99]

I love watching this show in 2020 worse year ever with this corona virus going around.

[@jacobbaranowski]

watching a movie on dilup lol hahahahahahahahaahahahahaha

[@Firefoxfifty]

3 - 10Mbps.......and i have people moaning at me about 500 Meg Fibre connections.

[@Maskddingo]

Aside from FIOS (which is far from universal) we are still using these same technologies 13 years later. That's pretty shamefull. What happend?

[@VAX1970]

We have many new technologies VDSL, VDSL 2 and VDSLVplus

[@compmanio36]

"What happend?" Well local governments enforced corporate monopolies, that's what "happend".

[@RonJohn63]

We're still driving cars after more than 100 years. What happened?

[@Fiilis1]

13:22 MP3 ! Can I assume fould pirateplay here lol

[@johnnylongfeather3086]

Ha! Dreamweaver! I had an @home account then I think it got replaced by Comcast?

[@bebophunter8998]

its sad china now owns opera do not use it. free vpns are not free.

[@AcornElectron]

So funny seeing advice to allow all cookies and enable all windows settings 🤣🤣. It was bad advice even in 2000 Edited to say Netsonic…. Wha happun?

[@jacobbaranowski]

I am still parinoid about coockies I am a cookie monstor

[@jacobbaranowski]

wow he used a 555 number and it worked....omg

[@stevef6392]

Ugh, DSL. It sucked even back in 2001-2005 when I was using it. Iirc mine ran at 3 mb/s, which was a decent speed for '01 but man was it unreliable. I was lucky to go 2 days without the connection going down.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

The local DSL only promises 3mbps to my address, even in 2022. Needless to say, even though it's cheaper than cable model (>200mbps) that speed is just too painfully slow for modern Internet uses, particularly any kind of streaming even at low resolutions.

[@jacobbaranowski]

golden globe awards and bush

[@Jwdude123]

Wonder what ever happened to the host? I mean he never was very good at interviewing, but that comb over is legendary..

[@VAX1970]

He is still around

[@bwzes03]

John Ward Bryan Lunduke here o n KZbin did an interview/webcast with him a month or 2 ago... Look for Lunduke Hour and Stewart Cheifet.

[@Wizardofgosz]

Stewart just replied to a question I asked him on twitter.

[@comson68]

@@VAX1970 And still around now - October 2020 (Wikipedia).

[@outdevo]

The way he cutoff his guests and went to another was legendary!

[@tmofee]

DSL? Nah won’t succeed. ;)

[@Blake4014]

18:51 John McCain : I can tell who's gay..... tut tut... thats unacceptable language these days!

[@ytscksdabig1]

Wow Opera browser around back then, crazy.

[@LoveMafae]

none this does nothing

[@jacobbaranowski]

Direct TV in 2000 20:14