On-line video hit my home this week, bringing my entire family together in front of my laptop. It wasn't for some YouTube clip, but live video - and thousands of hours of it with the olympics. NBC has been delivering the olympics at nbcolympics.com using streaming video technology known as Silverlight.
My MacBook didn't hiccup with Microsoft's Silverlight. The streaming was flawless across my wireless network, even when watching one main stream and three separate picture-in-picture images - a total of four separate video streams. I never imagined watching fencing, soccer, horse jumping, and bike racing all at the same time. It's left my kids asking to watch the olympics - on our computer. Several times this week we've had the laptop open while watching the nightly games as well. I would have never expected Microsoft to change the way we watch sports - but it has definately proved its worth. Silverlight may have been relatively unknown before this point, but it's emerging as a viable, industrial-strength platform for delivering streaming video at a massive scale to users on different platforms.
The company I work at, AGI, offers Silverlight Training for designers and creative professionals looking to create interactive and streaming content.