NAB: Microsoft shows off rival to Flash, QuickTime

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[Kosh GTO]

Microsoft on Monday showed video pros at NAB Silverlight, a new Mac and PC-compatible Web browser plug-in that provides interactive Web capabilities similar to how Adobe Flash works with streaming video capabilities superior to QuickTime, according to the company.

Microsoft will provide a beta of Silverlight later this month with plans for its general release to follow. A “technology preview” is available for download.

Silverlight lets content creators incorporate video and animation into their Web content. It provides a method for displaying vector-based graphics, text, animation, media and overlays. Silverlight doesn’t require any special back-end Web environment to deploy — it integrates with existing infrastructure tools such as Apache and PHP, JavaScript and XHTML.

Formerly code-named WPF/E, Silverlight is targeted at content providers who want to distribute video and rich media on the Web and designers and developers working with interactive applications. The software works on the Mac using either Mozilla Firefox or Apple’s own Safari Web browser. On Windows, it also supports Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7.

Already Microsoft has signed up some major players to distribute Silverlight content, including Akamai Technologies, Brightcove, Eyeblaster, Major League Baseball and Netflix.

The company has developed a companion toolset called Expression to help develop Silverlight content. Expression — Windows-only — has been positioned as an alternative to Adobe’s Creative Suite 3 software, and is expected to be released in June. Preview releases are available for download now.

Microsoft has previously positioned Silverlight as able to match Adobe Flash in more traditional rich media ares, but a recent statement from Forest Key, a director of product management at Microsoft’s server and tools division whose bona fides include a senior management stint at Flash developer Macromedia, suggested that Silverlight is superior on the video front.

Flash has “some video capabilities, and some success in that market,” Key said. But Silverlight offers “better video quality than Flash,” while the Expression tools will be “cheaper, faster and better” than Adobe’s offerings, he claimed.

Silverlight can play video at 720P high-definition quality — the same 720-line resolution used by DVDs. Depending on bandwidth, videos start playing either immediately or after a few seconds of caching. That ensures that picture quality doesn’t degrade, Key said.

Silverlight employs the VC-1 video codec originally developed by Microsoft as Windows Media Video 9, now available as an open standard. VC-1 is technically superior to other codecs such as MPEG-4, which is used by QuickTime, especially in the area of digital rights management (DRM), according to John Bromhead, vice president of marketing at Tarari, a San Diego-based maker of high-end video hardware that is supporting Silverlight.

Those content protection features make VC-1-based systems such as Silverlight and Windows Media Video more attractive to movie studios and others conscious about protecting their content and/or making money from it, said Kathleen Maher, an analyst at Tiburon, Calif.-based Jon Peddie Research. And while Microsoft is aggressively going past the PC to get cable set-top boxes to run Silverlight, she said, “that’s a race that Apple is just starting.”

System requirements for Silverlight call for a G3/500MHz or faster (Intel included) and Firefox 1.5.08 or later or Safari 2.0.4 or later.



Who cares :)

[compman777]

so whats this MS is going to block Quicktime from all new OSs of windows? sounds like what MS would do

[Kosh GTO]

they are lose some of the power they use to have,so now they are will to take on everything to get a market share again

[compman777]

but quicktime will still have power because those who have Ipods and use itunes is bundled with Quicktime.

[Valkyrie]

Personally I think it's a stupid plan.  If they weren't so proprietary they would have a better chance of having a larger market share.  Why?  Because they would be required to have working programs instead of the crap they come out with that is cumbersome and only half finished.

[lordmutt]

It's Microsoft guys, not like they can actually challenge quicktime lol

And say they do, it's just THIS release, quicktime is always in development as it's a very important part of Itunes music store and thus the Ipod, Apple's best success

[Evil Q]

yeah but that doesn't mean they're not gonna be an asshole about it

look at java

[compman777]

It's Microsoft guys, not like they can actually challenge quicktime lol

And say they do, it's just THIS release, quicktime is always in development as it's a very important part of Itunes music store and thus the Ipod, Apple's best success

well like I was saying earlier they (MS) can just make it more of a problem to used vista and quicktime (ex. vista crashes with it) .

[Exeron]

MS, WTF?!?!?!, Its M$

[TC1]

You would think that M$ would want to increase their reputation and popularity by getting along with other Operating Systems? Afterall - that would have a positive effect on M$ cash flow.

[Valkyrie]

Theoretically.  except what it would do is show up it's shortcomings & people would switch.    Which is why they don't play nice!

[TC1]

LOL - I agee Val!  

I look for M$ to get a lawsuit slapped on them for shutting down other software that 'could' run with the M$ OS previously.

[Valkyrie]

 Oh that would be soooo nice to see happen!  Sign me up to watch that unfold!