Recently in Video Category

Quite a funny story was unveiled here in Las Vegas at Mix. Netflix VP of Web Engineering explained why they deployed a Silverlight-based video player. Netflix wanted to enable their MacOS customers to access their on-line video library. But because the solution worked for MacOS and Windows - and allowed them to use a solution that didn't require an installation of an application from their site, and allowed them to utilize adaptive streaming - dramatically reducing issues associated with "buffering", they've ended up standardizing on Silverlight for their video streaming. I was surprised to learn that they roll-out a new player every two weeks as they continue to try and improve the on-line experience - that's quite a short product development cycle!

Would you expect to develop a MacOS application using a platform from Microsoft? With Silverlight 3 developers are able to create applications that run outside the browser on the MacOS. While the idea might sound crazy, and certainly is landscape changing - it's smart for Microsoft. As more applications move to the Cloud, and applications consume Cloud services, Microsoft can continue its role as a big player in the emerging Cloud computing space, in developer tools, and in the platforms used for delivering content.

I saw a great example of this with KEXP developing a media player that works on-line and off-line, with auto-detection of network capabilities. The player is stand-alone (works outside the browser) and I saw it running on MacOS and WIndows. If you are a MacOS developer you can get the Eclipse Tools for Silverlight at www.eclipse4sl.org/mac.

A small pack of my colleagues gathered around a computer monitor in our office on Tuesday to watch the inauguration ceremony. To make certain we didn't miss a beat, we had a Silverlight stream in one window and a Flash stream in another. We weren't alone, as video delivery provider Akamai reported 7 million live simultaneous streams on the sites they serve - which appears small when compared to the 21.3 million live streams CNN indicates they streamed. While this shows this huge increase in demand for on-line streaming video, the bandwidth and infrastructure aren't quite there for a flawless performance with live streaming video. While the Silverlight stream looked better, both streams stopped from time to time - and neither stream could be viewed on an iPhone, where neither Silverlight nor Flash video have a player.
Because we provide Flash Training and Silverlight Training, we were pretty excited to be able to watch such an important event on-line using technology that we help organizations adopt. published by: Christopher Smith

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.