Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 1536 Open all pages within 90 seconds

"You know there are TVs like this? Okay, okay, buy me 20 of them. What, how much? Why are they so expensive?"

Ronald returned home and began to investigate and confirm some clues in his dream on the plane. The first thing he got feedback from was the thin flat-panel TV.

However, his assistant told him that only Fujitsu in Japan can produce plasma TVs in the American market. This type of plasma TV, a 42-inch model, costs $. For this price, you can buy ten of Sony's latest Trinitron TVs.

This made Ronald's habit of settling accounts come back, and he immediately changed his mind and bought only two, one for Diane's home as a gift and the other for the office.

After the TV was delivered to his home and the workers had installed it, Ronald turned it on to try it out.

He dug out the "Rage Street" videotape Diane had shot in his bedroom to try it out. The results were mixed. The film was shot mainly in dark tones, and it was popular at the time to put smoke on the set to create a soft light effect.

The plasma TV wasn't as bright as the Sony Trinitron, so dark-toned movies were especially dim. Ronald had to draw the curtains.

The picture was much clearer, without the flickering feeling of traditional tube TV. Ronald took out the manual, and it turned out that this was a new technology of plasma TV line-by-line scanning. In contrast, high-end tube TVs like Trinitron still use the TV standard of interlaced scanning. In addition, the 42-inch TV is relatively large, and Ronald retreated to the bed to feel that it was a normal distance for watching TV.

He watched it for a while. Actually, the color reproduction of plasma TV may not be as good as Trinitron. But the 16:9 large screen brings an unparalleled sense of immersion. Ronald even felt a little like watching a movie on a screen.

If the cost of this type of TV drops to the level of ordinary TVs today in the future, it may bring many changes to the industry's business model.

The 16:9 screen makes the cutting or black borders used in videotapes unnecessary, and it can be produced in a ratio close to that of a movie widescreen.

In this case, the current videotape format will have to be improved. Or, the larger screen will require a higher resolution, so perhaps there will be new carriers to meet the requirements of watching movies on larger screen TVs...?
Ronald had many new ideas. This dream gave him some guesses about the future. If movies can be easily watched on computers in the future, then at that time, whether school education and film directors are still needed will become a question.

Most people with directing talent go to college to solve a problem, which is to see the works of various directors from past generations to learn and absorb. If there is such a convenient channel to learn classic works, wouldn't it be easier to learn directing?

Just like Quentin Tarantino now, he has always claimed that he learned all kinds of knowledge about directing in video rental stores, but he deliberately did not tell the media that he had taken acting classes and learned a lot about filming as a screenwriter in the crew.

If the cost of filming movies becomes cheaper in the future, perhaps a self-taught genius director will really emerge.

"Ronnie, why did you draw the curtains?" Diane came in at this time and asked curiously when she saw that the bedroom was very dark. But when she saw the big screen TV, she realized that Ronald was going to watch a movie.

"Oh my god, why did you find this movie?" Diane saw herself on the screen wearing a black and red Armani suit, and couldn't help but feel a little shy. She was very young at the time, not even 20 years old, but she had to play a popular rock singer who was almost 30 years old. Now it seems that her acting is so fake, but this dress is quite nice.

"Oh my god, my hair was so messy back then, and this outfit, um..." Diane smiled sweetly. Was Ronald trying to recreate his old look? He called his name in a daze during the shoot.

"Oh, I want to see the dark tones of the early 1980s on a big-screen TV..." Ronald said halfway through his sentence and laughed himself. Wasn't Diane's misunderstanding good? "Yes, I want to see what you looked like back then."

"Ronnie..."

"Diane..."

Two hours later, Ronald came out of the bedroom refreshed. His assistant had helped him collect the name of the Internet software in his dream.

The documents on the desk said that this company, called Netscape, had just launched a beta version of software in October called Netscape Navigator.

This thing is said to be a new protocol that allows people who cannot operate BBSs like USENET to see other people's content on the Internet.

Old Internet software like USENET is not really useful for people who don't have some computer knowledge. But the new Netscape Navigator is very friendly to non-professional users.

In contrast to the navigator, this new way of surfing the Internet under the www protocol is called web surfing.

With a click of the mouse, you can jump to a new text at a place called a hyperlink. No training is required, and anyone can do it.

The trial version still has many errors, but the good news is that Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape, launched the official version 1.0 of Netscape Navigator in the past two days.

In an industry magazine called Wired, the various functions of Navigator 1.0 were fully published. Mark Anderson's photo was placed on the cover of the magazine, and in addition to the introduction of the new product, the inside pages also included his exclusive interview and many articles praising it.

"Netscape Navigator will completely change the way we access information. Marc Andreessen said at the launch event that Netscape's goal is to make the Internet easy for everyone to use, so that the Internet will become a mainstream technology, rather than just limited to academic circles or technology enthusiasts."

"Well, this is good." Ronald picked up the floppy disk under the magazine interview and prepared to install this browser software.

"The browser is free for personal and educational use. Netscape promises that any page will load in no more than 90 seconds under the Netscape Navigator browser."

"Free?" Ronald was surprised. Nowadays, software is very expensive. For example, Microsoft's office suite costs several hundred dollars even when it is discounted. Netscape Navigator uses a free strategy, which is free for personal and educational users. This is to gain the largest number of users in one go.

Such a good thing is actually free. Mark Anderson is a bit like a hippie back then.

"Anyone can download the software from our official website and install it for free. The installation software is only 1M in size and can be downloaded in about 14.4 minutes using the oldest 13K modem."

Not only is it free to use, but it doesn't even require the usual floppy disk or CD distribution media. Netscape Navigator provides direct downloads, and you can download instantly by simply connecting to their server using FTP.

Ronald opened his USENET software, found the address of the Netscape server, typed the network address on the magazine into the FTP download location, and pressed the Enter key.

Humph, Ronald is using the fastest 128k ISDN dedicated line, which allows him to complete the download in just over a minute. This is much more convenient than using a floppy disk.

I watched happily as the computer was connected to the Internet. The download progress increased quickly from 0% to 1%, but then the download interface froze there and never moved again.

Ronald gave up downloading immediately and took out the floppy disk and installed the browser. Then he connected to Netscape's homepage. There was nothing there, just a blank white screen. Only the "N" logo slowly loaded halfway and then froze there.

"It takes 90 seconds to load any page, but you can't even refresh your own company's page." Ronald pressed the refresh button skillfully several times. Maybe the promise of free was too tempting, so many people went to Netscape's page and the server was overwhelmed.

I have a browser, but I don't know where to look. Ronald felt that the searchable website in his dream had not yet appeared. He had no choice but to log in to the USENET BBS and then asked honestly, "I have installed the Netscape browser, where can I go to see interesting content?"

After a while, many enthusiastic netizens responded.

"You can check out the online version of Wired magazine."

Ronald typed the URL into the address bar of the browser, and sure enough, the title of Wired magazine appeared on the page. This interview with Marc Andreessen was placed on their homepage for visitors to view.

This web browsing method is really convenient. You can use the mouse to drag the scroll bar up and down, and you can see a lot of content without turning pages like a magazine.

The only drawback is that the photos are still relatively blurry and take dozens of seconds to load.

"Thank you. Although my modem is fast, it still takes a long time to download pictures. I don't think it's suitable for reading online magazines now." Ronald quickly replied to the enthusiastic netizen. In short, "Too many pictures will kill the cat!"

"You can look at the Virtual Library of the Web, which is a website created by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the www protocol. It has links to many resources in the fields of physics, computer science, medicine, etc."

Ronald saw that this person might be a university researcher. He went to the online virtual library, which was full of textbooks and brief summaries of the latest research results. It was not interesting at all.

"Thank you, but I'd like to find something more interesting."

Ronald replied and the other side replied immediately with an angry emoticon >:-(
"Isn't physics interesting? Isn't computer science interesting?"

"Man, he's talking about the kind of fun, you nerd. Like are there any 'good photos' of Hollywood actresses, you know what I mean." Another respondent expressed the thoughts of netizens on Ronald's behalf.

Finally, it was the administrator of the online version who gave Ronald a reply, "You can go to a website called 'Jerry and David's World Wide Web Guide' and have a look. There is everything there."

This is a collection of interesting websites created by two Stanford college students. After Ronald typed in the address akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo, a web page with many hyperlinks appeared.

The above lists the web pages that can be browsed according to various categories. In addition to the categories that college students are interested in, such as art and humanities, business and economics, the Internet and computers, there is no surprise that the entertainment category appears, and there are many Hollywood links below.

In addition to the movie database established by Microsoft and some BBSs that collect various film reviews, the most eye-catching is a website called Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

There are introductions to various movie actors and pages of the movies they have filmed. It is very convenient to click with the mouse and you can jump to browse at any time.

The disadvantage is that most of the movie stars and movies have not been included. This website is uploaded automatically by fans and then released after review by the founder of the website, Cole Needham.

However, the existing information is already quite good and is much more convenient than searching for information in the yearbook.

In addition, since it takes 90 seconds to load an audition photo that is blurry due to insufficient resolution, IMDb often does not include photos of the actors.

There are only a handful of movie stars with photos on the entire website. There are only Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, James Dean, and a few other movie stars with a lot of fans... plus one... Jackie Chan.

Ronald thought this website was great and was willing to invest some money here to help Cole Needham create files for all the movie stars. This would make it much easier for Hollywood casting directors in the future.

Ronald found his phone number on the website and called him. This Cole Needham worked in Bristol, England, as a software engineer. No wonder he was able to build the website's architecture by himself.

Cole Needham didn't believe it was Ronald Lee who called him at first, but when he saw the caller ID was from Hollywood, he believed it 80%. After that, the two chatted about his film projects, and Cole Needham looked like a familiar fan.

Ronald also understood why Cole Needham would maintain the server at his own expense and contribute all his spare time just for a hobby. This guy is also a super movie fan.

“Can I ask you why most celebrities don’t have photos?”

"Ah, that's because the server bandwidth required for photos is very expensive. I pay for it myself, so I can't afford too much. I can only choose a few photos of some celebrities that everyone likes."

Ronald thought that this was indeed the case, and he became more interested in acquiring him. Such selfless fans needed support.

"I understand Monroe and Hepburn, but why did you give Jackie Chan so many photos?"

"Ah, it's because I'm a fan of his. I love watching his movies so much."

"Oh, so that's how it is. Jackie is my good friend. He will be coming to Hollywood soon to attend the premiere of his new film Rumble in the Bronx. Do you want to come? I'll introduce you to each other. By the way, I'll pay for your flight and hotel. I love your website so much. We can discuss how to make it better."

"Ahh..." Cole Needham on the other end quickly agreed, and after hanging up the phone, he started to yell that he was actually invited by Ronald Lee to go to Hollywood to meet his idol Jackie Chan. And all this was because Ronald saw his webpage. The Internet is really a magical place.