Netflix to abandon Silverlight for OS X Yosemite, go with Media Source Extensions for video streaming on the Mac

Maybe it wasn’t meant to be between Netflix and Silverlight.

According to the cool cats at The Mac Observer, Netflix is finally moving away from Microsoft’s Silverlight for video streaming on the Mac, at least for OS X Yosemite users. The company said it is instead relying on a feature called Media Source Extensions which will give subscribers 1080p quality video without taxing your Mac’s CPU or battery.

Currently, Netflix streaming on the Mac requires Silverlight, which is a multimedia playback and streaming extension from Microsoft. Much like Adobe’s Flash, Silverlight is proprietary and requires users to install extra software on their Mac. In OS X Yosemite, however, no extra software is needed because all the pieces are already in place to support HTML5 video.

“We’ve been working closely with Apple to implement the Premium Video Extensions in Safari, which allow playback of premium video content in the browser without the use of plugins,” Netflix said in a statement.

OS X Yosemite won’t officially ship until this fall, but a public beta is coming soon. Netflix said its Silverlight-free streaming will be available to anyone using Safari in the beta release.

If you get a chance to try out the Yosemite beta with Netflix and have any feedback to offer, please let us know in the comments.