Microsoft Killing Silverlight? 324
SharkLaser writes "Silverlight 5 might be last version released by Microsoft. Several industry insiders and partners for the last few weeks have heard from their own Microsoft sources that there won't be new versions released after Silverlight 5. Status on service packs and support for Silverlight is unclear, as Microsoft haven't yet released lifecycle support end date even for the previous Silverlight 4. By their support page they will give full year head-up before ending support. With Adobe ending development of Flash for mobile browsers and Microsoft ending development of Silverlight, HTML5 video looks a lot more promising. But will content providers be able to give out their material without DRM and how does HTML5 perform with non-video side of Flash and Silverlight?"
And... (Score:5, Insightful)
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The important parts (,) will remain, as the same codecs would be as vulnerable in WMP as they would be in IE on Windows. On Linux, we wouldn't care anyway as we have SELinux and AppArmor securing Chromium by default and Firefox (mozilla_t) on lockdown too. Mac OS X? Well that has never really been that secure anyway!
Re:And... (Score:4, Informative)
Adobe Flash was like having another proprietary browser inside the browser. Nothing the browser makers could do would lock it down (except for unloading the plugin). The advantage of HTML5 is that Mozilla/Google/Apple/Microsoft can place restrictions on how subfeatures are implemented. Out-of-tab & off-page animations can be halted. Storage can be blocked for cross-site requests. Video can refuse to play automatically. Canvas can require explicit permission. Shaders can be statically verified & limited to a stricter subset of GLSL. Etc.
Netflix (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Funny)
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In this case that would be a step in the right direction. Flash is much more widely available than Silverlight is at present.
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Netflix can't do that unless and until there is DRM in HTML5 video. The main reason they stream with Silverlight now is because Silverlight allows encrypted streaming.
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There already is, it's called a 3rd-party codec, DRM'ed WMV anyone? ;-)
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So instead of making it obvious that you are running a proprietary plugin, you are just making it a little less blatant.
It's almost as if this is being driven by people that value appearances over practical considerations.
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There are practical considerations. It means that instead of writing and maintaining an entire programming platform (and making users pay the storage/memory/startup time costs that using it entails) to watch a movie, they're only going to use a video codec.
There's no ideological considerations, a WMV + WMDRM plugin is just as proprietary and locked-down by itself as when it's bundled inside Silverlight.
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Re:Netflix (Score:4, Informative)
In this case that would be a step in the right direction. Flash is much more widely available than Silverlight is at present.
Much as i don't like flash at least flash sites are accessible from Linux. I have been told that a few Silverlight sites work with moonlight but have not found any myself
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Insightful)
Except Adobe is clearly moving towards killing off flash. They've announced the death of mobile flash in favour of HTML5, and it seems likely that desktop flash will eventually follow.
After all, it doesn't really matter to Adobe what runtime is used. They don't make money off people downloading the Flash runtime. They do make money off selling the flash designer software, which costs hundreds of dollars, and the streaming server solutions. What difference does it make if Adobe's software is spitting out stuff that runs in the flash runtime or HTML5?
My concern is that HTML5 is clearly not up to the level where it has feature parity (or stability/consistency) with Flash or Silverlight. For example, HTML5 currently has no agreed upon standard for dynamic audio. Sure, it can play a sound or music file, but if you want to actually generate or process audio, that's impossible. Mozilla and WebKit both have their own proprietary competing APIs to do this, but neither is final yet, and certainly not a standard.
Given a few years, HTML5 will probably be able to replace Flash/Silverlight, but clearly not yet!
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My concern is that HTML5 is clearly not up to the level where it has feature parity (or stability/consistency) with Flash or Silverlight. For example, HTML5 currently has no agreed upon standard for dynamic audio. Sure, it can play a sound or music file, but if you want to actually generate or process audio, that's impossible. Mozilla and WebKit both have their own proprietary competing APIs to do this, but neither is final yet, and certainly not a standard.
On the other hand, this will spur some more active evolution of HTML5 - now that all the big boys are in this together (I'm specifically referring to IE9, and HTML5 used as an app platform in Win8; Apple and Google were there much earlier), they'll have much more incentive to figure it all out - so it doesn't have to take a few more years, but more like a few more months...
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Funny)
In this case that would be a step in the right direction. Flash is much more widely available than Silverlight is at present.
Flash might be more widely available, but the Silverlight performance is clearly better, so it would be a step in the direction of lower video quality and higher processor and memory utilization.
Wow. That would be about as bad as the VCR market adopting VHS over the vastly superiour quality of Betamax!
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In this case that would be a step in the right direction. Flash is much more widely available than Silverlight is at present.
Flash might be more widely available, but the Silverlight performance is clearly better, so it would be a step in the direction of lower video quality and higher processor and memory utilization.
Wow. That would be about as bad as the VCR market adopting VHS over the vastly superiour quality of Betamax!
Pet peeve. VHS did not win as result of marketing, or porn, and Betamax wasn't really a better product. As someone there at the time, the Betamax had somewhat better image quality, yes. Vastly is just going overboard, but partly depending on PAL or NTSC you did see it as somewhat better. But a video recorder that couldn't tape a full movie without you returning home from your dinner to turn the tape before leaving again is not a superior home video technology. And, another reason you would think Slashdot ap
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Considering Netflix originally moved from Flash to Silverlight, I doubt this.
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. Would anyone have installed Silverlight if it hadn't been for Netflix?
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Re:Netflix (Score:4, Insightful)
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No, the largest "gaming base" in the world would be either a) Facebook or b) Steam.
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Yup. Would anyone have installed Silverlight if it hadn't been for Netflix?
At least Silverlight can be kept current with Windows update.
It drives me insane that a user needs to spend 30 seconds or more, and ONLY after rebooting, to say "Yes, yes, I agree, and I would like to install the flash player update that won't let websites WTFPWN the shit out of my computer. OH you meant 'Download.' Okay, yes, please install. *zip* Yay you're installed, now go away." Whereas it takes less than one second to dismiss the dialog, effectively saying, "Nope, serious security holes are FINE BY
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The thing is in order to run flash properly(think windows not linux or OS X) Flash needs direct hardware access at levels above that of say video games.
This is why flash lite and now flash mobile is so do damn hard to get and each handset has to have it's own port, it is because a simple change like apple going from A4 to A5 processor required a complete rebuild of the software stack.
It is why flash is only on some android devices. every little processor change was harder to deal with than for the complete
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Yup. Would anyone have installed Silverlight if it hadn't been for Netflix?
Never interested in Netflix, but to watch some videos on the BBC required it. I may have installed it, once. Can't remember the last time I actually used Silverlight for anything. Adoption was pretty limited.
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Wizards of the Coast use Silverlight to power their Dungeons and Dragons online tools.
Character Builder (Score:3)
Yes, and it sucks eggs. Most importantly, I can't access it from my Android phone.
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Unfortunately our government uses it to stream their TV programs on the Web.
Re:Netflix (Score:4, Interesting)
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Native Apps (Score:3)
They have an app for Android and iOS phones, no reason they wouldn't make a Windows or OSX app if they really wanted to.
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They do use it on windows boxes but they have linux clients as well. They seem to use whatever tech suits there needs on the platform.
Netflix on Linux natively in 3...2...1... (Score:2)
So where does this leave Netflix, the only company willing to take dirty bribe money to require silverlight for use with their service? Even Hulu doesn't use silverlight.
What about the Olympics? They require(d) silverlight to view any footage, live or recorded.
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And silverlight has pretty good bitrate scaling support, I'm not sure if Flash supported that when Netflix was first implementing this stuff.
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In order to get the content from the content producers, I presume Netflix had to provide some sort of promise that the streams could not be ripped. Since Silverlight was born in the DRM era, I can only conclude that DRM was a design feature rather than a bolt on. And when the Netflix techies and lawyers got together, Silverlight gave them the most confidence in living up to the UnRip
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Netflix with no DRM support? I'm sure the studios will love the sound of that.
This is hardly a shock... (Score:5, Insightful)
Flash and Silverlight represent the mid-1990s way of doing things with third party browser addons. Back when we needed crutches like these, they were useful. The leg has healed, though, so it's time to throw the crutches under a bus.
Content producers should just suck up and use non-DRM video streams. They should all know by now that both Flash and Silverlight video "protections" have been circumvented just like Blu-Ray, DVD, etc and that there is really no technological recourse against this.
Can you back up this claim? (Score:5, Informative)
Flash and Silverlight represent the mid-1990s way of doing things with third party browser addons. Back when we needed crutches like these, they were useful. The leg has healed, though, so it's time to throw the crutches under a bus.
Content producers should just suck up and use non-DRM video streams. They should all know by now that both Flash and Silverlight video "protections" have been circumvented just like Blu-Ray, DVD, etc and that there is really no technological recourse against this.
Really? Do tell how exactly those Silverlight protections have been circumvented. Unless you are talking about a streaming media recorder which simply records the stream as it plays on your PC, I am not aware of any way to defeat Silverlight DRM. The use of separate protected streams for audio and video is fiendishly clever and I've never heard of a successful way to crack it. A video forum where I regularly participate gets posts all the time asking how to record Netflix streams and nobody has ever suggested anything but a streaming media recorder.
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The streaming recorder works though, doesn't it? It's the "rubber hose" principle applied to Big Media - encrypt it all you want, but if you can see/hear it, you can copy it.
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>Oh, you're recompressing it? Enjoy the additional quality loss.
Who cares? Honestly, only OCDers care about whether pirated media is 100 percent identical. It only really has to be "good enough" for the vast majority of people. Look at how popular aXXo one-cd movies still are in the trackers.
--
BMO
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Oh, you're recompressing it? Enjoy the additional quality loss.
These days, the codecs are good enough that if you use the same one at the same bit rate, it will result in almost no loss of quality, as the first compression removed all the "hard to compress" parts.
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I doubt sufficient motivation exists to crack it. You can get higher quality from DVD (or especially Blu-Ray) rips off TPB for anyone so inclined, leaving the only people who want to record Silverlight those people who don't know / don't want to use BitTorrent. Most of those people aren't the sort to know how to crack it. And with only Netflix using it, there really just doesn't seem to be a point.
So maybe no one has circumvented it, but probably just for lack of trying. Witness how fast the much-vaunted P
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I doubt sufficient motivation exists to crack it. You can get higher quality from DVD (or especially Blu-Ray) rips off TPB for anyone so inclined, leaving the only people who want to record Silverlight those people who don't know / don't want to use BitTorrent. Most of those people aren't the sort to know how to crack it. And with only Netflix using it, there really just doesn't seem to be a point.
So maybe no one has circumvented it, but probably just for lack of trying. Witness how fast the much-vaunted PS3 was hacked after removing OtherOS support. And as you say, streaming media recorders always work. DRM simply does not work.
I watch silverlight drm:ed streams everyday. For live sports. Since it is live, the argument about dvd:s and download of course doesn't work.
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Hey fucknut, nobody with a life cares about watching recorded "live" sports.
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But would people whoa re watching live sport bother to crack it? I ahve no idea what they think they are protecting with live sports.
Anyways, just divert the stream to a secondary buffer after decoding and you have gotten around
Re:Can you back up this claim? (Score:4, Insightful)
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You can have the strongest steel door, with the best locks in the world and it doesn't matter if I can get in through the window.
IN fact, no one will bother trying to get through the door, sine the window would be easier. And thats true if the door just as the appearance of being a heavily locked steel door.
Meaning, it so easy to get around, no one bothers to crack it.
or maybe it's magic, who knows.
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Flash and Silverlight represent the mid-1990s way of doing things with third party browser addons. Back when we needed crutches like these, they were useful. The leg has healed, though, so it's time to throw the crutches under a bus.
No. We never needed flash to play internet video. If you link to a video directly, it will play in your system's default video player.
Re:This is hardly a shock... (Score:5, Insightful)
Flash and Silverlight represent the mid-1990s way of doing things with third party browser addons. Back when we needed crutches like these, they were useful. The leg has healed, though, so it's time to throw the crutches under a bus.
No. We never needed flash to play internet video. If you link to a video directly, it will play in your system's default video player.
That's downloading a video file and playing it. That is the same as 1990's video. In 2011 I want to be able to seek in my video file (or watch live streams), I want autmatic adjustment of bitrate depending on my bandwidth, and whoever I'm downloading the video from want's to make sure I pay my subscription to watch this game. There are basically only a few technologies that handle this. And html5 isn't one of them.
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The sorry state of navigation in streaming video is the best argument why to avoid it in general. The "streaming" formats really have no advantage here.
The main problem is making sure that people aren't getting your content for free.
Nothing else about "streaming" is terribly compelling for anyone.
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The sorry state of navigation in streaming video is the best argument why to avoid it in general. The "streaming" formats really have no advantage here.
The main problem is making sure that people aren't getting your content for free.
Nothing else about "streaming" is terribly compelling for anyone.
Wouldn't the opposite of streaing be downloading and offline watching? That feels awkward. Especially for live events (the main use of SL it seems) where you suggest I download the game after it is finished?
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No. We never needed flash to play internet video. If you link to a video directly, it will play in your system's default video player.
This kind of wisdom has sadly gone the way of the dodo. The marketing department convinced everybody we need in-lined videos because that's so much better
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No. We never needed flash to play internet video. If you link to a video directly, it will play in your system's default video player.
This kind of wisdom has sadly gone the way of the dodo. The marketing department convinced everybody we need in-lined videos because that's so much better
Why would I want to open a video in a separate player? Do you open images on websites in your picture viewer as well?
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Call it FUD or call it what you will, I haven't seen enough acceptance of Silverlight to get me to switch my development in that direction. It's a shame, really, as that would make my job much easier. So, I stick with ASPX pages (in part because the app is already written there) and I'm becomming better acquainted with javascript to handle some of the feature requests my users have. And for the record here, there is no video in my application.
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Worked for online music stores, didn't it?
Good riddance (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea that a general-purpose applet platform, with all the attendant security risks, is worth keeping simply to play DRM-encumbered video strikes me as utterly daft. It's like keeping a rabid rottweiler in your kid's playroom so that they'll have something to draw.
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Except that there are some times when you need the DRM. It's an awfully big risk for the content providers to let a subscription service use a DRM-Free format for rentals. For sales, it's not as big of a deal since there are ways of finding pirates, but for those that just download from a legitimate source and capture it to disk. That's a completely different issue.
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There are NO times I need DRM. And know what? DRM on VCRs just didn't work; I always copied tapes I rented, as well as Pay Per View.
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Macrovision on VHS is hardly digital now, is it.
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No, it isn't, but it worked about as well as CSS. Meaning, for a while and then not at all.
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It's an awfully big risk for the content providers to let a subscription service use a DRM-Free format for rentals.
What exactly are they risking? Someone who wants a video for free can get it already. The only thing they risk is making their rental service more attractive.
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lost or control, real or imagined.
(BTW: Reality = Imagined)
And so DMCA/ACTA to the rescue!
and in 20-30 years PLUG: Personal Listening Unit Grapple
Hint: it goes in your head.
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Re:Good riddance (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea that a general-purpose applet platform, with all the attendant security risks, is worth keeping simply to play DRM-encumbered video strikes me as utterly daft. It's like keeping a rabid rottweiler in your kid's playroom so that they'll have something to draw.
Silverlight is not just for video. Nether is Flash.
Silverlight's DRM can be harnessed by anyone seeking to make (get this!) secure applications.
When it's something you don't understand, it's an "attendant security risk".
When it's security that prevents you from stealing shit, it's DRM.
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DId I say it was? I don't have anything against DRM for video rental; in that context I'd even call it sensible. My point is that if (as seems to be the case) the only traction Silverlight has got is in playing video, that niche would be much better served by a smaller and far less general plugin.
Do you not understand the concept of "attack surface"? Do you not think that a general-purpose platform maybe has a larger one than, say, a dedicated video player? Or are you just trolling, as your tone suggests?
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No. It's DRM because it controls when I can watch it, removes time shifting, locks down content even when the DRM company is ut of business or no longer supported.
Make backups difficult, and removes consumer choice.
THAT is why it's DRM. I should be able to record wherever I want and then watch it for my personal used when ever and where ever I want.
I really ahve no desire to steal anyopnes content, but I will. If I miss an episode of family guy, I'll go look for it and if it isn't available for streaming, I
What about Video?? (Score:3, Interesting)
First there was Flash video over RTMP, then there was Adobe HTTP Dynamic streaming (HDS). Both of these were ADAPTIVE streaming technologies, and extremely popular an widley used. Moreso RTMP, but HDS is starting to gain adoption.
HTML-5 does not provide any method for any kind of adaptive bitrate, or fragmented video delivery. It is strictly PROGRESSIVE download - i.e. download the whole file, and play it. There are a billion problems with this. No adaptive bitrate (downgrade video quality if you cannot meet the sustained bitrate), and difficulty in caching (caching one giant file very difficult for a reactive, real-time cache, as opposed to caching smalller HDS or HLS "fragments"). The only other really "competitor" would be Apples HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) - which is the standard for iOS devices, and starting to gain adoption on Set-Top Box-devices, but pretty invisible on the desktop space.
So...my question is... "What about video!?"
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This is more a problem with lazy encode jobs, than with the presentation software.
Flash video encoding forces the provider to reencode the video in a streamable media format. Prior to this, people were using terrible "live stream" type streaming media servers, like real audio or microsoft media servers.
This is an issue simply because of the following things:
1) at the time those were popular, the major industry push was akin to "live broadcast tv, but on the internet!" Not, "video on demand"
2) memory and pro
Re:What about Video?? (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry. You're just wrong about the progressive download thing. And it's not in the scope of HTML5 to define bitrate or fragmented delivery. Fragmented delivery is turf for HTTP and bitrate is for the browser or embedded player.
Read:
14.35.2 Range Retrieval Requests
HTTP retrieval requests using conditional or unconditional GET methods MAY request one or more sub-ranges of the entity, instead of the entire entity, using the Range request header, which applies to the entity returned as the result of the request:
Range = "Range" ":" ranges-specifier
Please read the HTTP 1.1 RFC
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html [w3.org]
No they possibly cant. (Score:2, Informative)
t
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there has been numerous news regarding how they were wavering about .net, and when those articles appeared here, the same people lambasted anyone suggesting that microsoft may ditch .net people too, even while .net users were in a stampede in their own forums over questions over future of .net.
The reason why people lambasted those that suggested such things is that because the suggestions were based off rumors which proved to be completely unfounded after the Win8 developer conference (BUILD). If you recall, the original story was that "Win8 apps will be HTML5/JS only". That, in turn, was due to rumors that were triggered by summer demo of Win8 where Sinofsky showed off a bunch of Metro-style tiled apps, and boasted that "all of them are written in HTML5".
The reality was demonstrated in BUILD - s
more promising? (Score:2)
With Adobe ending development of Flash for mobile browsers and Microsoft ending development of Silverlight, HTML5 video looks a lot more promising.
no it doesn't. it looks exactly as promising as it was before. the only difference is that there's now less competition driving innovation in that direction. the death of competition is never a good thing.
That's because... (Score:3)
No functionallity will be lost with this and it's not much of a transition for developers either, as their code is directly portable to WinRT.
Bill
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It's not all quite as simple.
First of all, functionality is lost in a sense that Silverlight is a browser plugin, whereas Win8 apps run out of browser. People use in-browser apps for intranet to enable "seamless updating" - that does not apply here.
Second, Silverlight is a portable browser plugin - it also runs on OS X. Win8 apps, obviously, only run on Win8.
Finally, Silverlight code can be easy to port, but it can also be hard depending on what dependencies it has. Easiest case is when you just have to ren
World of Goo (Score:3)
No. Once again, no. (Score:2)
Wait? There is STILL DRM out there? (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought DRM was already a thing of the past. Who is still doing that?
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I thought DRM was already a thing of the past. Who is still doing that?
Netflix, for one.
Move over, Web surfing. Netflix movies now take up more of the Internet pipes going into North American homes.
A study published Tuesday by Sandvine Inc. shows that Netflix movies and TV shows account for nearly 30 percent of traffic into homes during peak evening hours, compared with less than 17 percent for Web browsing.
Only about a quarter of homes with broadband subscribe to Netflix, but watching movies and TV shows online takes up a lot of bandwidth compared with Web surfing, email and practically every other Internet activity except file sharing and videoconferencing.
As late as last year, both Web surfing and peer-to-peer file sharing â" mainly the illegal trading of copyrighted movies â" were each larger than Netflix's traffic.
Netflix's Internet traffic overtakes Web surfing [msn.com] [May 17]
Barnes & Noble made a big deal out of its brand-new Nook Tablet's compatibility with Netflix and Pandora at its recent unveiling, apparently giving Amazon a bit of a complex. Amazon did its best to one-up the Nook in today's release, rolling out the laundry list of Fire-friendly apps that will be available on day one, including "Netflix, Rhapsody, Pandora, Twitter, Comics by comiXology, Facebook, The Weather Channel and popular games from Zynga, EA, Gameloft, PopCap and Rovio."
Amazon now says "several thousand" Android apps will be available through the Amazon Appstore for Kindle Fire, considerably less than the hundreds of thousands of apps currently populating the Android Market. Of course, this could be a good thing, as much of what's offered there is pure garbage.
Kindle Fire: Yep, it'll have Netflix, Pandora, and more [cnet.com]
Is it Christmas? (Score:2)
DRM and HTML5 (Score:3)
This may be a bit off-topic, so I apologize. I know that content publishers nag and nag about losing revenue so they punish the people who actually pay for the privilege.
I wonder how much piracy would happen if publishers just trusted their users and released videos without horrible amounts of DRM. (My biggest pet peeve is not being able to just play a Blu Ray disc but having to sit through at least 15 minutes of ads.)
While I know some bad eggs would copy the file, isn't it being done regardless? So my question is DRM the only thing keeping HTML5 from really taking off?
netflix (Score:2)
Last I heard, Netflix streaming uses Silverlight, despite the completely lack (at the time) of support on any platform other than Winders. (Now there's Moonlight, but I suppose that will go away as well.)
So, I'm wondering what Netflix will switch to, and if anyone over there feels the slightest bit of embarrassment.
That would be weird (Score:3)
Since Silverlight is coming to the Xbox in a big way within the next few weeks. I suppose they could transition that to a different platform, but I don't think the large number of content providers they lined up for this release would be thrilled.
Silverlight is great for OOB Business apps (Score:2)
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You must be new here, nobody RTFA on slashdot.
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Nope, at least not because of Silverlight. MLB was a Silverlight launch partner but they quickly left the platform and moved to Flash.
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Will they abandon browser based streaming and just start writing closed source apps that gives them a greater degree of control than ever before? Probably.
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Given the market penetration of .NET as opposed to Silverlight, I think this is utter nonsense. And now that Oracle is screwing the pooch vis-à-vis Java, you can expect more .NET, not less.
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Goodyear and Firestone must piss you off.
Re:General Problem with Developing on Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
I honestly can't see this as a big problem on Microsoft - they have quite a long track record of supporting their tools - even legacy Visual Basic skills can be used today quite effortlessly. Yes, they have had their misses and some tools or even languages (J++ comes to mind from the old days...) have been deprecated quite quickly after a blistering start but take a look around - there are frameworks and languages coming and going everywhere. If you want to bet safely learn C and C++ and code your own supporting libraries. Yes, it sucks when vendors pull plug on technology. But the days of learning Fortran or Visual Basic once and expecting to have guaranteed job for the rest of your life are over (well, if you are a true Fortran or VB genius you can get a nice paying job in maintenance these days...), And the same applies to OSS as well - they are not immune. Projects and languages come and go - yes, in the support side they are at an advantage because if you are a true guru you can dive into the source and support the platform - but I don't see the platform support as a huge issue on Microsoft side either. With right DLLs you can still run Win32 VB applications just fine - yes, the vendor doesn't support those anymore and doesn't develop new features but you still got what you have when you chose the platform.
Can you give examples of Open Source projects (in programming) which Microsoft has tried to emulate and has ended up with barely working and sucking copy?
Silverlight on web had really no big and bright future, it was just a poke on Adobe to steal marketshare on (DRM) video delivery. But those skills learned there are not totally wasted, it is not *that* hard to transform from one Microsoft architecture to another. But if your big bet was Silverlight on browsers (cross-platform/browser) then well, you are out of luck but it did not require a genius to figure that out from the start.