On Monday, Microsoft introduced video professionals attending the NAB conference Silverlight, a Mac and PC-compatible web browser plug-in similar to Adobe’s Flash paired with what the company considered video streaming superior to Apple’s QuickTime. The program, which is currently available as a public beta (or “technology preview”), is available for download with a general release planned later this month according to Macworld News.
Previously known as WPF/E, Silverlight is designed around vector-based graphics, text, animation, media and overlays while using existing back-end web and infrastructure tools such as Apache, PHP, JavaScript and XHTML. On the Mac end, Microsoft has stated that the plug-in works with both Firefox and Safari while on the Windows end the plug-in is designed around Internet Explorer 7.
Looking to charge out of the gate upon release, Microsoft has already contracted with several marquee names to distribute content such as Akamai Technologies, Brightcove, Eyeblaster, Major League Baseball and Netflix. The company has also created a Windows-only content development suite called Expression, which is being offered as an alternative to the recently-released Adobe Creative Suite 3.
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On Monday, Microsoft introduced video professionals attending the NAB conference Silverlight, a Mac and PC-compatible web browser plug-in similar to Adobe’s Flash paired with what the company considered video streaming superior to Apple’s QuickTime. The program, which is currently available as a public beta (or “technology preview”), is available for download with a general release planned later this month according to Macworld News.
Previously known as WPF/E, Silverlight is designed around vector-based graphics, text, animation, media and overlays while using existing back-end web and infrastructure tools such as Apache, PHP, JavaScript and XHTML. On the Mac end, Microsoft has stated that the plug-in works with both Firefox and Safari while on the Windows end the plug-in is designed around Internet Explorer 7.
Looking to charge out of the gate upon release, Microsoft has already contracted with several marquee names to distribute content such as Akamai Technologies, Brightcove, Eyeblaster, Major League Baseball and Netflix. The company has also created a Windows-only content development suite called Expression, which is being offered as an alternative to the recently-released Adobe Creative Suite 3.
Representatives from the company claimed that Silverlight can play video at full 720p high-definition resolutions and, depending on bandwidth, can either begin playback immediately or after a few seconds of caching. The VC-1 codec originally created by Microsoft for use in Windows Media Video 9 has been cited as superior to the MPEG-4 codec used in Apple’s QuickTime, especially where digital rights management is concerned, a feature that should make the Silverlight package more attractive to movie studios and other firms looking to protect their content, according to Kathleen Maher, an analyst for Jon Peddie Research.
The Silverlight beta is a 3.5 megabyte download and requires Mac OS X, a 500 MHz G3, G4, G5 or Intel-based processor, Firefox 1.5.0.8 or later or Safari 2.0.4 or later to run.
If you’ve tried Silverlight or have comments about it, let us know.