Silverlight 3 out of beta, joins forces with your GPU for HD streaming
By Ross Miller 
posted Jul 9th 2009 9:42PM
posted Jul 9th 2009 9:42PM
[Via Ars Technica]
Read - Download Page
Read - Smooth Streaming demo
posted Jul 9th 2009 9:42PM
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The "Smooth Streaming" technology is not new; it's what Netflix uses to adjust video bitrate on the fly. Just saying.
Ummm, well, that happens to be because Netflix uses Silverlight.
And Netflix is using Silverlight 2.
It is on the fly, but not as on the fly as this:
http://www.iis.net/media/experiencesmoothstreaming
Very nice.
I haven't used my Netflix streaming in a while, but whenever it did the adjustment, the video always stopped to readjust. The example Ordeith gave the link for shows that when the adjustment is made, the video continues playing. Very, very cool. I wish YouTube did that.
Yeah netflix is noting like smooth streaming.
And you heard it here first.... my bold prediction from ms with this is there will be a ms branded iptv service (and real iptv this time not the uverse stuff) for media center and xbox live within a couple of years. It will be a hybrid system where network shows are ondemand as soon as its aired live (think the current video marketplace with smooth streaming). You also dont need a dvr anymore... subscribe to the series you want to watch and watch things like football live). Zune has always been about the subscription and they would add a new subscription for this as well.
this idea came to me when watching the HD live broadcast of the jackson funeral..... they really can broadcast live HD signals now and have it work well (even from canada)
It’s not new at all, since Real Player did it more than a decade ago...
Impressive.. I was looking forward to Silverlight 3.. I'm a big fan of flash but Flash has become more of a development tool for interactive things with solid support for vide.. but MS has done great things optimizing Silverlight for video. It's amazing how good 2.7mbps HD 1080p stream looks like. I saw the 5mpbs stream it was fantastic.
This is good news for everyone. Netflix will most likely upgrade to Silverlight 3 and the quality of HD will get even better. Online streaming is improving a lot faster then I expected.
Will netflix stream on a netbook now without choppiness?
I just tried streaming Netflix tonight on my Acer Aspire One D150 after updating to the new player. I have to say it is dramatically better.
Normal content played smooth and I also tried an "HD" video which played almost as well. For the HD you notice some very slight stuttering/frame skips on fast moving/panning shots but most people probably wouldn't even notice it.
Just a note that I was using Windows 7, I haven't rebooted into XP to try it there yet.
I am quite glad that it looks like I can stream to my netbook again.
Hopefully some other people can try it out and make sure it is running well on their netbooks as well.
I downloaded the new version and the performance on the test site was much better. I will have to give this a try at home on my slower connection.
I don't know if I would call it hardware acceleration. At least it uses both cores.
If Silverlight's so good, why are sites (which were originally designed using that) switching to Flash now?