You could simply open windows media player and stream video 20 years ago. The resolution would have been the main impressive thing, along with how much money you spent on that high speed internet connection. But far from utterly unbelievable. I'm not sure anyone would have cared which program you used.
In theory, maybe. In practice? Something would have broken, or you'd have to fiddle with some settings, or you'd have to download the video (somehow) before you could play it in a standalone program – the experience would have been much less streamlined, at least. Also, which single cable would you have used to carry video and audio, and which could be plugged into a laptop and a TV?
> Well HDMI came out a couple years later and didn't really blow minds.
Of course not. All of those improvements were, taken on their own, iterative and evolutionary – as nearly all technological development is. But taken together, they make a big difference.
Except I'm saying all those other things already worked fine. Your scenario is an incremental change between then and today. If you want that super impressive effect you need to compare against longer ago than 2002. If you do that in 1992, wow.
You could still do a 20 year comparison if you wanted, 1992 vs. 2012. Since the experience has barely changed in the last 10 years.
You could simply open windows media player and stream video 20 years ago. The resolution would have been the main impressive thing, along with how much money you spent on that high speed internet connection. But far from utterly unbelievable. I'm not sure anyone would have cared which program you used.