So, Silverlight finally gets a release. The Halo 3 demo is nice enough, but I haven’t seen anything that knocks my socks off as a developer yet. My money’s still on Flash; “Moviestar” adds H.264 video support (HD) and going by Ted Patrick’s blog post it seems the next version of the Flash player, “Astro”, is going to add even more features.
I still think Adobe need to add DRM support for video when not served from an Adobe Media Server; it pretty much renders progressively-downloaded video with any rights issues unusable otherwise.
Beta player here, with the FAQ here. Still no word on DRM and/or protecting content in the plug-in (as opposed to outside the browser through Adobe Media Player). Shame; looks like Silverlight will still have it trumped in that respect, as not everyone’s going to want to shell out for Adobe’s media server to ensure secure streaming of content.
The third beta of the Flash player on Adobe Labs will support H.264 video, with full support in the “proper” version of the plug-in coming in the 4th quarter of this year.
Big news, and a big step towards taking on Silverlight. Lots of detailed insider information on this announcement can be found on kaourantin.net, with other sites I’ve read this morning including Yahoo!, Aral Balkan, and Flashmagazine.
It seems Adobe have relented and included DRM within Flash video with the announcement of Adobe Media Player.
Hot on their heels is Microsoft, who’ve also announced Silverlight, a plug-in for Windows and Mac that’ll work across the major browsers too.
Who will win? Hopefully Flash, but it’ll depend on which of the big boys incorporate what technology on their sites, despite the apparent lacking in Silverlight’s feature set compared to Flash. I’d also like to think the ease of development might also help drive either technology.