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“You’re one simple step from…” Don’t sweat it Silverlight, I was just leaving

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21–30 of 34 posts

Re: “You’re one simple step from…” Don’t sweat it Silverlight, I was just leaving

#21
post #2

The Olympics should be as open as possible. There has to be some sort of monetary deal between Microsoft and NBC. This really could have been a great time to push HTML5.

If you think the Olympics should be accessible to all, then HTML5 is definitely not the way. NBC's core audience is the general masses who are predominantly IE and couldn't do anything with HTML5 video.

Re: “You’re one simple step from…” Don’t sweat it Silverlight, I was just leaving

#22
If you have flash and you refuse to install Silverlight out of some moral anti-plug-in stance then you are just being silly. At that point you're just haggling over the price: http://jo-kes.blogspot.com/2007/06/churchill-humor.html

Re: “You’re one simple step from…” Don’t sweat it Silverlight, I was just leaving

#23
Because of you mentioning the snowboarding video I installed Moonlight only to be confronted with this: "Due to Olympic broadcasting regulations, NBC is only allowed to show Olympic competition video on the internet to users in the United States and U.S. Territories (including Puerto Rico). Users outside of those locations will still have access to an extensive set of non-event video content on NBCOlympics.com including the video listed below."

Now back to uninstalling Moonlight...

Re: “You’re one simple step from…” Don’t sweat it Silverlight, I was just leaving

#25

You are not NBC's customer; Microsoft is. I am sure that Microsoft paid a lot of money for this, and it was money well spent. This is a trend that's only going to continue. I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft sponsor another major video website like Hulu to get Silverlight installed on more computers. I think in a few years Adobe may have to resort to paying to get the Flash plugin installed.

It's funny though, poking around the olympics' site you can see they use flash extensively as well for some of the interactive features.

Re: “You’re one simple step from…” Don’t sweat it Silverlight, I was just leaving

#26
So instead of taking one simple step to watch the Olympics in the best quality possible the author would rather rant about wanting to use a technology that doesn't exist yet(HTML5) or use a technology that cannot deliver the the highest quality(Flash). The simple truth is Silverlight has the capability to deliver the most superior quality video. You can argue all day long about how you don't like 3rd party proprietary software, but the fact is, NBC went with Silverlight because it's the best solution that exists today. Sounds like good business to me.

Re: “You’re one simple step from…” Don’t sweat it Silverlight, I was just leaving

#27
post #6

What's the problem really? I just installed Silverlight instead on whining about it.

Flash is bad enough. The last thing I need is another Flash, owned by Microsoft, and only used because Microsoft is paying everyone to push it on me.

Re: “You’re one simple step from…” Don’t sweat it Silverlight, I was just leaving

#28

If you have flash and you refuse to install Silverlight out of some moral anti-plug-in stance then you are just being silly. At that point you're just haggling over the price: http://jo-kes.blogspot.com/2007/06/churchill-humor.html

The page loaded, and I started reading the story, and then the whole screen was covered by a popup that said "Something went wrong loading the page, reload or go to a different page". No way to close it to finish reading. Might have even been flash covering it up.

Re: “You’re one simple step from…” Don’t sweat it Silverlight, I was just leaving

#29
post #4
post #3

I saw the same message when attempting to view a video on NBC's Olympics site. After grudgingly installing Silverlight I was still unable to watch anything. The videos require Silverlight 2 or 3, neither of which is supported on a PowerPC mac.

I don't understand why they are trying to push 2 proprietary formats on us. You think they would at least try to stick with just one if they weren't going to go with HTML5.

NBC doesn't care about formats. They probably made a great deal with Microsoft to make Silverlight the exclusive choice for their Olympics coverage. NBC makes some money and Microsoft gets their plug in installed on a lot of machines that wouldn't otherwise.
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