Opera always seems to get the shaft :(

From the article on On10:

A new solution for being able to take video, interactivity, animation and make it available on Mac, Windows and many browsers. We're talking cross-platform.

And it does high def streaming. Sweet. Even if it is from the Antichrist and his evil empire.

that is pretty cool that microsoft seems to be taking a cooperative look at things now as of late.

Yeah this is pretty big news in my opinion... I'm sure Adobe's got something up their sleeves as well, but it looks like Microsoft will definitely put some pressure on Adobe.

Microsoft is a company you can never count out... their dominance in the PC OS department gives them an advantage since they can always incorporate their technology into the OS. Companies like Google, Firefox and Adobe have to create really good products in order for consumers to go out of their way to not use Microsoft products.

Try "This is madness! This is Sparta!" deep.

That's pretty damn deep.

"The improvement upon flash-and this is why people would want to use this instead of Adobe's-is that it's high def. "

Is it impossible to imagine an upgrade to Flash that supports high def? Doesn't QuickTime do this now?

Does anyone have any experience in using this "silverlight" product? While I'm sure they will get penetration just because they will use it themselves, ActiveX didn't exactly take over the world.

that is pretty cool that microsoft seems to be taking a cooperative look at things now as of late.

bstinnet - remember, the second E is Extend.

I think it's true that Opera users seem to get the shaft. In fact, I was a bit surprized that it was given enough consideration to point out its lack of inclusion. I've only ever met about 4 Opera users (myself included) ever. I have some hope that Nintendo's use of their browser will help that out some.

On a more related subject, SilverLight seems like a good idea, probably long overdue, though the more established streaming programs will almost certainly upgrade to HD streams before MS can get any real momentum on making people install YET ANOTHER plugin. Either way, Kudos to Microsoft for pushing us into the HD streaming world.

This is big news! Flash uses a pretty weak codec, whereas this could use mpeg4 HD quality stuff.

Also, Flash is sometimes weak with the responsiveness and consistency of interface. This is nice.

1) Can it do games like flash can?
and
2) Please please tell me this runs on Linux. Without an hour's worth of work.
and
3) I wonder if totally ripping off everyone and everything in the computer world lately (Google->Live Search, iPod->Zune, Mac OSX->Vista, Flash ->Silverlight, ect.) is working out financially for Microsoft. Not that it really matters, M$ doesn't have the dollar sign abbreviation for nothing, but just curious.

When I look at Microsoft I really wonder how much profit they pull in a year. Everything they release seems to be "We'll lose money now and make it later." (Zune, Xbox, Xbox 360) It boggles my mind how they pull the money they do.

Microsoft has really lost their touch, nowdays all they do is tail others, trying to match innovation with endless pile of cash. They have been going after everything, making profit from nowhere (like gaming consoles and portable music devices). Do they see their own software as dying business or what madness drives them to throw away money in every possible directing without any sense of any of them?

I the quality is as good or better than ABC's plugin to view programs in near HD quality...
- Flash is dead as a streamer.
- Cable is dead.
- Dish is dead.

Lately with the "preview" of the quality ABC's TV streaming is doing, I think the future is IPTV.
Any other delivery system is going to be really hard pressed to compete...

ejdmoo says:

This is big news! Flash uses a pretty weak codec, whereas this could use mpeg4 HD quality stuff.

Flash 8 actually On2 VP6, which matches H.264 and the latest WMV quite nicely, sometimes even exceeding them, it's the flash player itself that is bottleneck when it comes to playing HD content.

It's really not our place to hate on Microsoft. We can't tell them what to do with their money. Besides, believe it or not many people like it. if we all were less bleeding-edge computer savy and more like (god forbid) our parents, we too would appreciate a trustable company providing tons of features in a stylish, easy way that integrates with all their other products like Live Search and eMail.

Is there even a way to watch embeded wmp files with opera now? since i upgraded to vista anytime i go to a site with a wmp it says plug-in recquired, but there is nothing to install. Am i doomed to having to us IE to watch these movies? or is there a soultion???

@LillieDesigns

I think it's because people don't understand Microsoft's financials. The losses incurred by the products you've mention pail in comparison to the revenue the company generates.

It's kind of interesting to sit down and review their earnings reports. Especially when you see the $1+ billion a month in free cash flow.

There's no reason that Flash can't play HD video. In fact, if you Google for Flash HD video, you'll find a few examples.

I'm guessing this announcement is just an attempt by Microsoft to create some friction on the day that Adobe has started shipping Creative Suite 3 (which includes Flash 9).

Flash is dead as a streamer.

Giggle, giggle.

I'll give it a shot because the icon for it looks pretty cool. Way cooler than Flash's red dot with 'fl'. In a way the MS icon looks like physical 3d form of some Mac OS X desktop pictures.

This gizmodo post makes it sound like Silferlight is a competitor to streaming media plugins (Flash, but also Quicktime and even their own WMV), while in fact it's a Flash replacement.

I was half-way through writing a bileful comment about the FUDdy move of introducing a product competing with themselves (PlaysForSure, anyone?) in order to knock out a competitor, when I realized that Silverlight is actually WPF/E with a real name. If they really make it work great and cross-platform, I applaud the initiative to finally get some competition to Flash.

Let me get this straight... you want me to let Microsoft touch my non-Microsoft browsers? Do you GET why I would be using a non-Microsoft browser IN THE FIRST PLACE?

(Hmmm... let's see... stability, trust [that's with a lower-case 't', like it was before Microsoft 'innovated' it], security, worms/virus threats, business ethics violations, standards-thrashing monopolistic behavior, Soylent Blue, and ... wait for it ... TRUST -- this time in all caps, which is still not the branded version Microsoft is selling.)

Oh yea. Now I'll need to install SilverLIghtBlock to prevent all the ads and crap from consuming 100% of my CPU. Just like I block all flash crap. (Makes Youtube hard, but oh well, better than annoying noisy webpages).

Wait... it works with Safari? Since when has MS started being nice to Mac products again? The discontinues WM Player for Mac a couple years ago, and Flip4Mac is the only thing that halfway works these days (and has stopped working on CNN.com, the only news website that would stream video to Macs before). Sooo... what's the deal MS? Why play nice now? And why just with this plugin?

Whoa, whoa, whoa... HD streaming video - wow!! Doesn't QT do this already? Yet another endeavour that has a high likelyhood of going the way of the dodo / zune. Microsoft should just embrace it's competition instead of trying to live vicariously. Just my 2¢.

ah yes... the typical ignorance and stupidity is illustrated once again... for those willing to fire a few synapses in their brains and read what silverlight is about, head here

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/faq.aspx

Gosh, some users on here are real paranoid. Since when was it a crime to make a better product or technology? Seriously, if Microsoft can do this, then that's good for them. And good for us. So you people against are telling me that you want to stick with something old, and never improve and get better things? Sheesh, you must be real idiots not to move on with sucess in this world. I for one hope they can do this, and do it real well.

:( They always exclude opera and for me opera is better than firefox and IE!

My company was actually considering doing some development in Silverlight, but we quickly backed out when we learned that (according to Microsoft's website as of last week, at least) it's only supported on computers with either

- Windows Vista
- Windows XP SP2 with a downloaded plugin

Those are enormous hurdles for reaching people. Even as great as Silverlight sounds, it wasn't worth the hassle.

*** READ THIS BEFORE POSTING ***

For anyone about to fire off a rant about Silverlight please first read up on "WPF/e", which is what Silverlight used to be called. Gizmodo is only telling you about 5% of the whole story.

A much better comparision isn't FLV movies, it's Adoble's new Apollo framework. Read up on Silverlight THEN go ahead and rant, but at least do so from an informed position. It's way, way, way much more than just media streaming.

Gizmodo is just people, and they've made a huge mistake like all of us do from time to time. They just didn't do any actual follow-up research on what Silverlight really is.

@SimianJones

Read your post, posting anyway:

I heard that the Silverlight logo was created using Creative Suite 3...

Narsil, NOTHING runs on Linux without an hour's work minimum. It's the Open Source Advantage!

So...Microsoft introducing a cross-platform, cross-browser plugin and all the fanboys here are complaining. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

If the product sucks, no one will use it. If it's good, Adobe will actually have to TRY to keep their market share, rather than just riding on Macromedia's success. What do you as a consumer have to lose from a little competition between giants? Absolutely nothing.

And to those pointing out that Quicktime does HD streaming, please read this:
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=macs_cant<...

Scroll down to the part that says "iTunes is the new Real Player" - it's true. I can't put just the Quicktime plugin on my computer anymore. I have to install iTunes (which procedes to take over, then re-organize and re-index my .75TB music collection) and then I get the privilege of running Quicktime, which hassles me to upgrade to quicktime pro everytime I view a damned file.

Microsoft has the money to release a product where they can make all their money on the server-side technologies. They don't have to pester you to pay them nickels and dimes for the plugin, and they can make it work with every browser, because that ups the sale value of the server technology.

God, fanboys are getting less and less aware of basic economics each day. Maybe that's why they're beat their chests at Apple's falling marketshare.

Alright. I'm still wanting to read up on this a little more, but here's my skeptical two cents so far. WMV sucks. Hard. And streaming WMV is like trying to urinate with a twizzle stick shoved up your peehole. If it does all the spiffy things they say it's going to do, well then bravo, and I have no problem jumping on the bandwagon. But I'm hesitant, to say the least.

I'm glad that Microsoft is rocking the boat with this one. Complain about it if you want, talk about how they're shamelessly cribbing off of Macromedia, whatever. I want high quality streaming video.

I know there are some examples of it out there, but the overwhelming majority of the stuff looks like it was done with a cell phone camera. I want to put my bandwidth to use.

So here's hoping that it works, even though I use Opera. Anything that fosters competition means all parties involved have to work harder, which means that the consumer wins.

You don't have to like all the horses, but you should be glad they're racing. Fanbois.