Infographic: The Growth of Streaming Video is Killing Network Television

As a child of the 1980s, I've spent my fair share of time in front of the boob tube.

When Lost was on the air, I anxiously conferred with my friends at work the next day, dissecting every detail, theory, hint and clue.

There are few shows, however, that I feel the urge to watch in real-time. The DVR is my friend, and being able to watch shows on my terms - and when I want to - is pretty great.

We've come a long way from the days where there weren't even a dozen channels and you had to get up and manually change the channel or adjust the volume.

Then, along came streaming.

YouTube seemed at first to be the spot where everyone could share their home movies, and suddenly everyone began posting videos of their stupid pet tricks. It's birthed a few bona fide celebrities (for better or for worse) such as Rebecca Black.

Funny or Die brought high-quality, high-resolution entertainment videos to our lives, making us seek out the site to see the latest wackiness those guys thought up.

iTunes and Hulu got us used to the idea of streaming the shows we liked to watch, even if we had to wait a day or so to see it, and could only watch it on our computer.

And then Netflix allowed us to stream rentals through our game consoles and other devices, so we could watch on our big-screen TV instead of our small-screen laptop. Call me old-fashioned, but other than the occasional movie trailer or funny video, I've no desire to watch video on my smartphone, no matter how big the screens get.

I mean, Star Wars is just going to lose some of the magic if it's on a screen that fits in my back pocket.

That's not to forget AppleTV, Roku, Google TV, Boxee and other options for watching streaming video.

So has streaming killed the TV star? Not quite. But it's definitely changed how we view video, as the following infographic shows.

Infographic by: Wistia