NBC Dumps Silverlight After the Olympics, Runs Back to Flash
NBC Dumps Silverlight After the Olympics, Runs Back to Flash
Posted 09/08/2008 at 9:46am
| by Paul Lilly
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NBC's fling with Microsoft's Silverlight platform appears to be over, at least for the time being. NBC had previously agreed to stream the Beijing Olympics to viewers using Silverlight instead of Flash to deliver the content, but now that the Olympics have wrapped up, NBC has turned back to Flash for this week's NFL season opener.
Even still, the short-term relationship can be viewed as a success for Microsoft, who managed to increase its install-base through the apparently time limited partnership. Overall download specifics were never disclosed, but we do know that at one point 1.5 million downloads were being registered per day, and according to a spokeswoman for Microsoft, at one point "more than 50 percent of the visitors to NBCOlympics.com on MSN already [had] Silverlight 2 installed." Having a large install base is important because it makes it easier for Microsoft to convince developers to use its platform.
And for Adobe, it means getting back a major partner, but not without a downside. While viewers were able to watch NFL games with Flash installed, reports have surfaced complaining of unwatchable video quality saddled with freeze frames, blurry action, and skipping back and forth while as the feeds tried to buffer.
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timacheson
September 14, 2009 at 7:36am
Users have welcomed the new NFL Silverlight player with very positive feedback. During last night's game Twitter was flooded with messages from viewers. Bizzarely, some American football fans, including the editor of Macworld magazine, sounded more excited about the new Silverlight player than they were about the game:-
drainbread
September 09, 2008 at 7:19pm
"Streaming" media just sucks, the only time it should be done is when it's a (truly)live event or news coverage.
Morpheous416
September 08, 2008 at 10:18am
"Having a large install base is important because it makes it easier for Microsoft to convince developers to use its platform."
Uh..... No.
This has been, and will continue to be.. Microsoft's ONLY way to get people to use their platforms. It isn't people's choices to download their software.. so much as it is the only option there is. Like IE.. since it's integration into the OS and MS's WU forcing users to install IE 7 as a "critical update" isn't a choice for those that use Auto-updates. It's a fact. If you wanted to view NBC content (aka MSNBC) you had to have MS software.
Now that it's over however.. I've uninstalled Silverlight because it's pretty much useless.
No Microsoft.. 1.5 million a day wasn't people going "oh yeah, check this out.. we have got to get this!!" it was "oh great.. here we go again".
Paul_Lilly
September 08, 2008 at 10:57am
From Microsoft's perspective, it certainly is to their advantage to build up a large install base, because as we know, Silverlight is not the only option. Estimates have 90 percent of computers sporting Adobe's Flash, making it easy for developers to choose that platform over Silverlight. And even though NBC was swayed by MS to stream the Olympics via Silverlight, they've since jumped right back to using Flash, which is what the bulk of viewers have installed.
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