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 | rdmiller
join:2005-09-23
Richmond, VA | Re: Siverlight worked great during the Olympics; why switch? Other than that the Silverlight developer tool is a free plugin for Visual Studio 2008 and a free download for the end user, I agree completely with your observation. | |
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gaforces
United We Stand, Divided We Fall
join:2002-04-07
Santa Cruz, CA | Perhaps they didnt like using beta software and chose to stick with production software which has less problems? | |
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| | rdmiller
join:2005-09-23
Richmond, VA | Re: Siverlight worked great during the Olympics; why switch? Beta software? ... as in Chrome? ... as in gmail? | |
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| | | EPS
join:2008-02-13
Hingham, MA | Re: Siverlight worked great during the Olympics; why switch? Does NBC use Chrome or Gmail?  | |
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| | | Jonbo298
join:2004-01-12
Council Bluffs, IA | I see what you did there. You FAIL | |
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| | Smith6612
Premium
join:2008-02-01
united state | SilverLight is not in beta anymore... | |
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ablack6596
join:2005-01-28
Scarsdale, NY | Probably because they're a business and want as many people as possible to actually be able to see their videos. | |
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Maxo
Your tax dollars at work.
Premium,VIP
join:2002-11-04
Tallahassee, FL
clubs:
 ·Embarq
| Re: Siverlight worked great during the Olympics; why switch? said by ablack6596  :Probably because they're a business and want as many people as possible to actually be able to see their videos. That's what I'm hoping. Going with a Windows only solution for Internet accessed content is not very smart in this new world where game consoles and cell phones are accessing the internet and are not running Windows. | |
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| jarthur31
join:2006-04-14
Carlsbad, NM
 ·US Cable
| I couldn't even find the online streaming games. The archives were incomplete. For example, I wanted to watch the Men's Basketball championship round. All it showed me was the 1st quarter. I met all hardware and speed requirements and it didn't play smoothly for me. | |
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sporkme
drop the crantini and move it, sister
Premium,MVM
join:2000-07-01
Budd Lake, NJ
·Optimum Online
| said by TK Junk Mail :I wonder if there is some financial reason for the switch. I'm sure that for the Olympics, Silverlight had the following advantages:
-publicity for MS (ie: you need to go install the thing and then the installed base of silverlight rises a bit since the Olympics are so popular)
-MS probably paid for a ton of equipment and possibly even had a hand in the networking side of things (who else would you trust to roll out a CDN for a new technology like this, especially when it's the Olypmics)?
-Since the network might have got hammered, restricting viewing to only those with Silverlight might have let them worry less about scaling things up. I'm sure the Silverlight "restriction" turned a large number of viewers away).
-Moving back to flash simply gives them more eyeballs, which they apparently really want.
As for Flash "failing", this is likely the result of a seasonal sport, continued speed increases at the consumer's end, and generally poor capacity planning. I used to have a friend at MLB.com, and he noted that each new season was always a bit of a surprise. | |
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NotAFlashGuy
@verizon.net
| Re: Siverlight worked great during the Olympics; why switch? The olympics were not restricted to Silverlight at all. There was a fallback experience, so the argument doesn't hold.
If I had to guess I'd say:
1. This decision was made long before the olympics (project funding, planning and then dev just don't happen in 2-3 weeks)
2. Probably some heavy pushing from Adobe on this. Other blog posts hint at that and the disappointment Adobe had in not being used for the Olympics
Pete | |
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dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ
| said by TK Junk Mail :I wonder if there is some financial reason for the switch. The NFL on their own site uses Adobe Flash. Maybe NBC had to pay too much to MS to license Silverlight and got a deal from Adobe due to the NFL already using Flash. Because people dont want to install more software just to view some crappy DRM laiden content streams.
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When I gez aju zavateh na nalechoo more new yonooz tonigh molinigh - Ken Lee | |
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Scree
In the pipe 5 by 5
join:2001-04-24
Mount Laurel, NJ | cool At least can record again.  | |
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amungus
Premium
join:2004-11-26
America
clubs:
·Cox HSI
| eh Well, can't say I'm a fan of either. MS is a little late to this party though...
Flash video CAN look good, but I rarely see any sites actually use high quality flash video, especially when full screen.
Most flash video I've seen also doesn't scale well when full screen - looks horribly pixellated.
Hate to say it, but I've seen more realplayer and windows media video scale much better when in full screen.
We should really be settling in on some standards for quality these days, especially with more and more people having high speed connections. Seems like flash video is largely a step backwards.
Just because (almost) everyone has flash shouldn't mean that it should be a standard for video. It's already horribly CPU intensive for what should be simple tasks, and it started out being more for simple animations etc. as opposed to other, more well established methods for displaying video on computers via network connections. Those solutions use FAR less CPU, scale better (in most cases), and have proven easy enough to stream to massive amounts of people.
Might as well just settle on some MPEG4 based video, and make sure it looks good no matter what you're watching it on - PC, TV, "insert mobile device of choice here...".
It's just sad to see video, which used to be a whole separate world from computers, be trashed so badly these days. Even MPEG-2 (which cable now uses even on 'analog' channels), can really get ugly after being recompressed too many times on its way to the home - "Broadcast Quality" video used to mean something, and it's sad when that gets pixellated, jittery, just sucky in general, even on 'analog' channels, let alone internet video.
We should already have "Broadcast Quality" for the 'net by now. Sure, there should be slightly lower quality types depending on speed, and HD quality for sure, but there really ought to just be a standard we can all agree on, and then if flashy, silvery, whatever comes along, I really wouldn't care... I'd rather keep my CPU cycles doing something else, like, I don't know, FOLDING @ HOME | |
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| EPS
join:2008-02-13
Hingham, MA | Re: eh Well HTML5 is supposed to introduce the [video] tag, which will allow for embedding videos without the use of flash. Unfortunately, the video tag isn't supported by any browsers as of yet, though I think Firefox 3.1 is supposed to have it? | |
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quetwo
That VoIP Guy
Premium
join:2004-09-04
East Lansing, MI
·TDS
| Flash Video can do HD video using H.264. It was introduced about a year and a half ago. »www.adobe.com/products/hdvideo/hdgallery/
The problem is their content delivery network dosen't know how to do streaming video over the net... I'm sure they'll figure it out. | |
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Mashiki
Balking The Enemy's Plans
join:2002-02-04
Woodstock, ON
 ·mybrighthouse
·Rogers Hi-Speed
| Re: eh Still needs a lot of bandwidth, but then again originally most stuff was locally cached for people to either download then watch or directly streamed from the site with a huge buffer.
As bandwidth catches up the problem will go away. Vimeo is a good example of a site where most of the content is in HD, but is locally cached. | |
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quetwo
That VoIP Guy
Premium
join:2004-09-04
East Lansing, MI | Re: eh Another site to look at is hulu. All Flash Video there too... | |
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Dagda1175
join:2001-06-17
Goleta, CA | Good bye full screen viewing Silverlight scales, Flash chokes. Flash is good for small videos back in the dialup days. Let it die. | |
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quetwo
That VoIP Guy
Premium
join:2004-09-04
East Lansing, MI | Re: Good bye full screen viewing How does Silverlight scale any better? What sources do you have? | |
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anony101
@comcast.net | Re: Good bye full screen viewing How does Silverlight scale any better? What sources do you have? Look it up.
NBC Olympics (scaled well using Silverlight)
NBC NFL (scaled miserably using Flash)
Are those good enough sources for you? | |
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| | | itguy05
join:2005-06-17
Camp Hill, PA
| Re: Good bye full screen viewing said by anony101 :How does Silverlight scale any better? What sources do you have? Look it up. NBC Olympics (scaled well using Silverlight)
MS footing the bill for the hardware, bandwidth, and probably having techs on site 24/7 to ensure that the Windows servers stay up. quote:
NBC NFL (scaled miserably using Flash) NBC trying to do it alone without anyone else footing the bill or hardware expense. | |
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Morac
join:2001-08-30
Riverside, NJ
·Comcast
| Flash bloat The flash plugin has gone downhill since Adobe bought out Macromedia. For reasons unknown, the 9.0 version of the plugin has high CPU usage at times which results in skipped frames or stuttering when playing back flv videoes. This occurs even on high end PCs. I see this frequently on many sites including You Tube.
The same flv files play back fine in other FLV players, just not flash.
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The Comcast Disney Avatar has been retired. | |
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| jester121
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL
·ViaTalk
| said by Morac :The flash plugin has gone downhill since Adobe bought out Macromedia. All of Adobe's software seems bloated and poorly behaved. It took them a version or two to screw up Flash but they managed it. | |
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jsz0
join:2008-01-23
Jewett City, CT
·Comcast
| Most users.... These days it's becoming harder to get users to download and install new software. All the terrifying warnings and constant fear of malware/viruses have actually had a real impact on the way users behave. It's ironic to see it burning Microsoft's ability to pitch a new product when their existing product was the cause of all the problems in the first place. Irony 101. | |
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Jmartz
join:2000-07-20
Tenafly, NJ
| Re: Most users.... said by jsz0 :These days it's becoming harder to get users to download and install new software. All the terrifying warnings and constant fear of malware/viruses have actually had a real impact on the way users behave. It's ironic to see it burning Microsoft's ability to pitch a new product when their existing product was the cause of all the problems in the first place. Irony 101. Don't worry, Microsoft will just install it as part of Windows soon... then everyone will have it from the get go, and anyone who doesn't want it will be able to go in and uninstall it... allegedly. | |
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KoolAID123
@theuniverses.com | Re: Most users.... Um, they have lawyers to stop them, seriously. The would not want to get into trouble with the DoJ or EU again. Although it is offered as a optional update on Windows Update, but its unchecked by default. | |
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| | | YayOtters
join:2004-06-12
Monroe, NC
·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: Most users.... It'd be nice to see multimedia customization options available on the first start of Windows. As in, have a series of menus with baseline plugins to install, like Flash, Silverlight, etc. That'd be more convenient than having to go to Adobe's site or Microsoft's site, download it, install it, then restart your browser.
And I'm sure people would argue against something of a monopoly created by this. Get the fuck over yourself, Flash is a MAJOR component on the internet today, there's no changing that. Maybe it's inefficient, but when websites the AVERAGE user use it (Ie, YouTube), it'd be silly not to make it easier to install.
The SilverLight install would just be an added option, perhaps it has little market share, but from I've read by some developer comments, it's quite nice to work with...And someone here said its video scaling puts Flash's to shame. | |
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| ross
join:2000-08-16
·Digizip
| said by jsz0 :These days it's becoming harder to get users to download and install new software. All the terrifying warnings and constant fear of malware/viruses have actually had a real impact on the way users behave. It's ironic to see it burning Microsoft's ability to pitch a new product when their existing product was the cause of all the problems in the first place. Irony 101. Just desserts, I'd say... | |
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Qumahlin
Never Enough Time
Premium,MVM
join:2001-10-05
West Chester, PA
| said by jsz0 : All the terrifying warnings and constant fear of malware/viruses have actually had a real impact on the way users behave. Judging by the continued growth of various botnets that require user interaction to be infected I would have to disagree. | |
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Richard B
Fur It Up
join:2007-06-22
Portland, OR | Silverlight failed to Load on my XP box I wonder the problem was Silverlight failed to install. I could not get the player ti install on my XP machine. | |
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| iowaboy
Premium
join:2004-02-28
Kalona, IA
·Mediacom
| Re: Silverlight failed to Load on my XP box Silverlight will also only work with an Intel processor. Funny how the Olympics was able to be watched even when SilverLight could not be used but with NFL one can't even watch the game. Now I understand why everyone is having trouble with getting flash to work correctly with Windows. Never had that trouble with earlier than Version 9 but now you have to go through a lot of hoops just to get flash to even work. | |
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Dr Demento
I Vant Blud
join:2002-01-02
Denville, NJ
·Optimum Online
edit:
September 7th, @05:42AM
| Re: Silverlight failed to Load on my XP box said by iowaboy :Silverlight will also only work with an Intel processor. Stop spreading FUD, the Olympic games through Silverlight streamed brilliantly to my 2Ghz Athlon64 XP box with 1Gb of RAM and Firefox 2 I might add.
There are many things you can knock Microsoft about but Silverlight is not one of the. It has been proven to beat the current Flash 9 (without costly suites) in everything except for mini games and crappily rendered video game parodies. While being less CPU intensive. Of course there is a known conflict if attempted with this add-on. | |
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Charles
@rr.com | Re: Silverlight failed to Load on my XP box Intel processor was required for Mac. | |
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meteorguy
@noaa.gov | bandwidth So. This is an alternative that will only accelerate me toward my neat little 250 gb Comcast Cap? | |
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Dr Demento
I Vant Blud
join:2002-01-02
Denville, NJ
·Optimum Online
| Re: bandwidth Oh please, like such streaming during the Olympics would even approach about 100Gbs unless you are streaming for a week straight.
As for if 720-1080p streamed content would ever become, it is all a matter of how highspeed broadband rollout goes and how many media outlets adopt it that would force ISPs to rethink their current constraints. Akamai already established one way to efficiently stream such content (click at your own risk  ). | |
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ub355
join:2005-09-15
Brookfield, WI | NBC's online Olympics I set up for the NBC package under Vista. However the video that was available was simply the same as was on their TV broadcasts, no live streaming as far as I could tell. Used DVR to capture the events I was interested in. | |
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| 
PGHammer
join:2003-06-09
Accokeek, MD
clubs:
·Comcast
| Re: NBC's online Olympics No live streaming? The most popular events were both broadcast live *and* streamed live; the less-popular events were all streamed live and available broadcast either live or via tape-delay (for example, women's soccer was streamed live in its entirety).
Oh....I had zero problems with my 2 GB/2.6 GHz P4 Northwood-C-driven Vista Ultimate box (with a mere X1650PRO AGP graphics card) with Silverlight (however, I have horrible issues with Flash 9) via CHSI Blast.
On why the NBC NFL site uses Adobe Flash; the content itself belong to the NFL, not NBC, and since the league is a Flash licensee (but not a Silverlight licensee), NBC was likely trapped into *settling* for Flash by the NFL. | |
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BF69
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | So far NFL streaming has sucked Both Thursday and tonight. I didn't watch the Olympoics couldn't be as bad as this. Completely unwatchable. How can NBC not be ready for the NFL season with them just doing the Olympics. | |
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derdy
join:2008-02-14
Saint Peters, MO
| asdf I have Windows XP on a AMD Athlon 2800+ system. Using Silver Light was terrible. Whenever I would put the Olympic event I was watching to full-screen the picture was blocky, fuzzy, and just an over-all unclear image.
After reading some comments from users experiencing the same thing using Silver Light, I unistalled it and just used WM Player instead. The difference was profound and I will never use Silver Light again unless there is some drastic improvement, but seeing as how MS went from XP to Vista I'm not holding my breath. | |
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hurleyp
join:2000-06-20
Ottawa, ON
| Maybe Adobe Paid? This article speculates that Adobe "might be helping to subsidize the cost to the NFL and NBCSports.com by covering some of the bandwidth costs associated with broadcasting the games online."
»seekingalpha.com/article/94296-i···rce=feed
I have no idea if this is true, but it would not surprise me. I have no dog in this hunt as I use the flashblock Firefox plugin.
--
"I reject your reality and substitute my own." | |
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kaevans
@verizon.net
| NBC did not drop Silverlight For clarification behind the technology decision, see »silverlightbiz.blogspot.com/2008···nbc.html. Quoting:
Unlike the Olympics, Sunday Night Football is a joint effort between the NFL and NBC Sports. The NFL made the technology choices on what technology to use online and was ultimately responsible for the application. The NFL chose flash. It's even called out in the Adobe press release.
It wasn't NBC's decision to make whether they would use Silverlight or not for the NFL project. | |
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NBC Returns to Adobe Flash for NFL
Siverlight worked great during the Olympics; why switch?
·