“NBC just finished broadcasting the Olympics online with Microsoft’s Silverlight video technology, but the network and the NFL are turning back to Adobe’s Flash for live streaming of Sunday Night Football this fall, and started tonight with the season opener between the NY Giants and the Washington Redskins,” Michael Learmonth reports for Silicon Alley Insider.
“The Olympics online were a joint production between NBC and Microsoft, and an opportunity for Microsoft to build a user base for Sillverlight, its new media player. But Flash has a much larger installed base: Adobe says it’s installed on 98% of Internet-connected desktops,” Learmonth reports.
“Microsoft, meanwhile, said that during the Olympics, 40 million US to visitors NBCOlympics.com didn’t yet have Silverlight installed,” Learmonth reports.
Full article here.
I sure didn’t see this comin..
</sarcasm>
flash sucks. huge resource hog, slow, flakey.
and silverlight makes it look good. really good.
can’t say i am shocked.
I refuse to infect my macs with silverlight.
One ore to go. Dump flash!!!!
Silverlight and Flash aren’t nearly half as bad as the pop ups I get on this site using Firefox. I have to surf this site with only Google Chrome or Safari and I’ll be safe.
@Raphael:
You will get NO pop-ups using Firefox if you install the AdBlock Plus plug-in.
Flash and Silverlight ought both be condemned to the junkheap.
Ubiquitous does not translate into good.
Just read the attached article and found it interesting that Microsoft is playing the “Just because we are not the majority player does not mean that we are not good” card.
Of course they also like to play the, “We are the majority player in OS so we must be the best, forget those up and coming players”.
I guess if you are Microsoft, you get used to saying what ever makes you look good since its all about sales and not customer.
HMMMmmmmm. Didnt Steve Jobs say something like that a number of years ago??? Something about sales running the company????
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
Just a thought.
en
what do you expect from NBC, a company so dum that they ko’d The KO?
of the two, I think silverlight is actually much better, one of the few things I think microsoft has ever done remotely well..
if you have not checked it out, download it and look at some demo’s of what it is capable of
wow I actually gave microsoft a compliment, quick someone smack me!
I’d gladly take Silverlight over Flash any day and twice on Tuesdays. Flash only gets worse with age–less secure and poor performance in Firefox.
@Erk,
*Smack*
Silverlight kept crashing my browser. I couldn’t delete that plug-in fast enough.
Erk,
Consider yourself smacked.
I’m not exactly sure if what you’re saying is even relevant. Flash is out there and everyone has it. Silverlight duplicates its functionality and nobody has it. It would have to be dramatically better than Flash in order to justify mass migration.
Is there a reason why everyone seems to be confusing possessive form with plural (demo’s v.s demos)? When I learned my English (in high school), they told me that plural does NOT use apostrophe. Were there any changes in English grammar since the 70’s?
I heard that the Silverlight deal was only for the Olympics.
Silverlight getting dropped IS NOT NEWS.
This is:
” … TomCruise.com iPhone Version Launches …”
My life is complete. Or not.
Actually I think I’ll go back to bed.
The Olympics is over. iPhones are used every day for internet use and dominates smart phone internet visitors. If it can’t stream to an iPhone on the web, it will die off to something that the iPhone can stream.
Advertisers want to sell something and iPhone owners buy the high end stuff.
I must say, silverlight is less of a resource hog…smoother playback. only downside is that silverlight breaks the video file into an zillion little files making it impossible to use safari’s activity window to download the video file…
@zippy
I didn’t realize they had a Mac version of silver<strike>fish</strike>light
@Predrag,
“Is there a reason why everyone seems to be confusing possessive form with plural (demo’s v.s demos)? When I learned my English (in high school), they told me that plural does NOT use apostrophe. Were there any changes in English grammar since the 70’s?”
The apostrophe is correct IF you consider that you use it to denote dropped characters (do not – don’t). in this case demonstrations shortens to demo’s.
A stretch, I know, but I don’t want to be too much of a grammar snob :^)
I wonder what Quicktime’s installed base is?
WindozeKiller:
You bring up an interesting point; is it in fact correct usage of apostrophe (for shortening long words)? “Don’t” is very standard, but rather unique. I had always felt that “Repo’s” or “Demo’s” or anything that is shortened, then made plural with apostrophe looked wrong. I may have been mistaken?
I was one who refused to install SilverJunk, and I made a very angry email to NBC about the decision to use it, and how I would not watch Olympics. Which, IMO not be saddled with a new untested and discrimanatory plug in. MPEG videos play on all computers, either with Quicktime or WindowsMedia. Olympics video should be platform agnostic and play on all computers possible.
Why can’t they just use standards based H.264!
“Silverlight and Flash aren’t nearly half as bad as the pop ups I get on this site using Firefox. I have to surf this site with only Google Chrome or Safari and I’ll be safe.”
Don’t know what you are doing wrong, but I get no popups at all.
If no one gets popups how the hell does MDN pay the bills?