[Vexx]

If we're going to try to make this thread useful... over the last five years things have actually gotten worse for streaming - due to the antics of the ISPs owned by cable companies and "content guardians". They see streaming as a direct threat to cable channels and *their* entertainment (loss of eyeballs) so they've been instituting practices like monthly transfer caps and throttling. Then there's the telcos, that are fighting tooth'n'nail to *avoid* upgrading their infrastructure - which results in over half the US not having anything one can remotely call "broadband" and they have their usage caps as well.

We could then talk about the lack of stream quality .... resolution, stuttering, too few servers trying to handle too many requests. Then we could talk about the "pseudo-licensing" (we'll stream it but we won't offer DVDs and we might take it down randomly).

We could talk about *what* gets streamed (oh, its not one of the "big 10", no you don't get that... or "oh we decided to stop streaming that" tough shit for you).

The Funimation/Nico deal is the first small creaking notion of getting to what I'd call interesting but there's still the 800 pound gorilla in the room called "infrastructure" in the US and it has a hammer.