“Microsoft is losing MLB.com, Major League Baseball’s online unit and one of the Web’s most successful subscription services, as a Silverlight customer,” Greg Sandoval reports for CNET.
“MLB Advanced Media said Monday it will use Adobe’s Flash Platform to deliver all live and on-demand video starting next year,” Sandoval reports.
“The deal, announced at the Adobe Max conference running in San Francisco this week, hands Adobe one of the largest and likely most profitable video services out there. MLB.com has signed up more than 1.5 million subscribers since 2003 and streams more than 2,500 regular and postseason games annually. Moreover, MLBAM has been a technological leader and is influential among Web video services,” Sandoval reports.
Full article here.
Up the ace!
Should have gone with a good format like QuickTime. My iPhone can’t see Flash yet. That will be between 9 to 49 million fewer smart phone viewers next year.
Major League Baseball isn’t a no profit group and should keep the high paying viewers in mind.
Jersey_Trader,
MLB.com At Bat already offers excellent video for iPhone users. It’s one of my most-used apps and one of the best for iPhone, IMO.
well, there goes MSFT’s only silverlight “trojan.”
There’s a huge bug with the MLB.com At Bat app. It still won’t display Montreal Expos scores or video.
The Olympics learned their lesson too.
@Wealthy – Also, no Brooklyn Dodgers. Or New York Highlanders or Boston Americans.
@Wealthy Industrialite
I had the same problem. Try a search for “Washington Nationals”.
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What will the scumkings do next? Each high profile Silversham site (Oly’s, MLB) that they’ve paid handsomely to use their tech has immediately abandoned the also-ran technology the moment Misrosoft stops paying for the development & promo rights. This silverfish must really stink!!
TSN (Canada’s major sports network) looked in to switching to Silverlight last year.
TSN.ca posted a Silverlight download link and told visitors that some content could only be viewed by downloading Microsoft’s Silverlight.
I guess this test didn’t go over very well, even with the jocks, because the Silverlight link and Silverlight-only content disappeared very quickly, and almost a year later, the TSN online video is still all Flash.
“What will the scumkings do next? Each high profile Silversham site (Oly’s, MLB) that they’ve paid handsomely to use their tech has immediately abandoned the also-ran technology the moment Misrosoft stops paying for the development & promo rights. This silverfish must really stink!!”
Damn, we GET it…you don’t like Microsoft. Sometimes the distance traveled by those to smash a company or a product is ridiculous. I’m not a Microsoft fan by any means but things like this are just douche-inducing.
Here’s a complete list of all websites now exclusively using Silverlight as their content player;
1. MSN Video
Oh, wait, my mistake …
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Instead of Silverlight, Microsoft uses Adobe Flash here on their own Microsoft site.
(Seriously)
Ian I suppose the fact that Microsoft itself tends to behave in just such a manner to those it sees as competitors might just have something to do with such contempt for it.
Seems that the only thing that Microsoft’s ‘Just throw more money at it’ strategy is working for is the paid anti-Apple bloggers scheme.
All other attempts including Silverlight, Zune and Vista have been total failures.
OWNED!
I’m still upset that Netflix has been duped into using Silverlight.
Oh well. It’s worth it to install it, just so I can watch videos on demand.
“well, there goes MSFT’s only silverlight “trojan.”
Except for NetFlix
What is the allure of going Microsoft in the first place?
I think it’s a mix of ignorance and mystique. I call the latter element ‘squinkiness’ where Microsoft has a mythology of being great and wonderful, but they are NOT. In fact, watch your ass.
I can’t say Silverlight at the NBC.com Olympics site was horrible, it was just clunky as hell. We’re only at version 2.0, which in Microsoft terms means it’s still in BETA. So it might get better. After a gazillion tries at media technology, MS did actually get Media Player right. It runs rings around Real. But of course QuickTime still RULZ MAN! It is far more capable than any of the alternatives and is entirely reliable. It just isn’t infected with DRM crap, which sadly a lot of people think is a good thing.
Adobe could certainly use some competition to wake them the hell up. But that the competition is Microsoft seems incredibly lame.
UH OH! I painted myself into a semantic corner and didn’t realize it. I stupidly sed:
“But of course QuickTime still RULZ MAN! It is far more capable than any of the alternatives and is entirely reliable. It just isn’t infected with DRM crap, which sadly a lot of people think is a good thing.”
What is sad is that a lot of people think DRM is a good thing, just to clarify. My semantic sense when boingo. Sorry.
@ Quad Core
oh yeah. thanks, i forgot. I’ve tried it on netflix and it works OK. I don’t hate silverfish, but it’s otherwise unnecessary… msft is grasping at straws with nothing to really add to the video streaming proposition. just another me too app.
What is missing is some decent market share from a non-proprietary format.