Why baseball benched Microsoft Silverlight
Screenshot from MLB.com's new Flash player.
(Credit: MLB.com)The thwacking sounds of bats striking balls will once again fill stadiums, as Monday is opening day for Major League Baseball. This year, Microsoft will watch from the sidelines.
MLB.com no longer uses Microsoft's Silverlight to stream games to its 500,000 subscribers. This season fans will watch live and on-demand video via Adobe's Flash player.
In November, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, the league's tech unit, announced it would discontinue using Silverlight, the browser plug-in that MLBAM had signed up for barely a year earlier. The decision was not insignificant. MLBAM not only runs the profitable MLB.com streaming-video service, the Web's most successful subscription service, but the group is also influential with other leagues and sporting events. MLBAM handles much of the back-end operations for CBS' Webcasts of the NCAA Basketball Tournament and this year will do the encoding for the 2009 Masters golf tournament (CBS is the parent company CNET News).
Baseball never detailed the reasons for dropping Silverlight but sources close to the negotiations between the league and Microsoft said it was a series of glitches and conflicts between the companies that led to the split.
First, baseball wanted Microsoft to make it possible for users to download Silverlight without having to possess administrative rights. When people are at work, it's often the company that possesses those rights and employees would need authorization to download the player. That frustrated plenty of MLB.com subscribers, according to the sources.
The other major issue was that baseball considered Silverlight too unstable. There were some high-profile glitches, including last year's opening day, which saw many MLB.com subscribers struggling to log in and others who were unable to watch games. The malfunctions lasted several days. The rift between Microsoft and MLBAM began to grow and hasn't stopped, said the sources, adding that lawyers for each side are still arguing over Microsoft's responsibility.
Through a spokeswoman, Microsoft declined to comment but did point us to plenty of other sporting events for which Silverlight was chosen, including NBC's Webcast of the 2008 Summer Games and CBS's online presentation of the NCAA basketball tournament. NBC also recently announced that it will broadcast the 2010 Vancouver Olympics using Silverlight.
But Silverlight was also suspected by many Netflix users of being the cause for a recent series of glitches that occurred with Netflix's streaming-video service. Microsoft appeared to acknowledge that its player was the cause of at least some problems when it said last month that Silverlight 3 could help Netflix customers who run lower-end computers and were experiencing dropped frames and poor viewing quality. Netflix has said that most of the feedback on Silverlight is positive.
Bob Bowman, MLBAM CEO, also declined to detail what happened with Silverlight. He did, however, acknowledge that MLBAM "has an ongoing dispute with Microsoft because of the significant problems we encountered last year." What Bowman wanted to discuss was Adobe Flash and the successful marriage of baseball and the Internet.
Q: How much better is your video player this year?
Bowman: The experience has been everything that we did not have a year ago...Nobody has seen true high-def before on the Web. (With this year's player) you can put it on any screen you want, there's no degradation at all. It has all the bells and whistles, picture-to-picture, DVR-quality pause, rewind, fast-forward, real-time highlights. The meat-and-potatoes of it of course is the picture quality itself and it is eye popping."
Q: How come your on-demand video subscription service appears to be more profitable than the other leagues?
Bowman: The nature of our game, we play every day, we have fans who watch us on Tuesday, talk about us on Wednesday, listen to us on Thursday and maybe go see us on Friday. They touch baseball every day. They just do it in different ways based on how much time they have. Today's society, the interactive-digital society, can stay in touch with baseball better than they've ever done before. That keeps getting better. The
iPhone's MLB At-Bat application is one example of that.
It isn't because we're different or smarter. Baseball is just better. It's better suited for this kind of daily, hourly interactive conversation. Then you get the video and people have 15 minutes. You better give them the very best product you have.
Bob Bowman, CEO of baseball's technology unit
(Credit: Major League Baseball Advanced Media)
Q: How much harder and more expensive is it to do high-definition streaming?
Bowman: First of all it's based upon what the park does. Probably only 70 percent of the games are in true high-def. About 30 percent of the games aren't in high def even on your TV. It's roughly doubling in terms of the costs. The infrastructure is more certainly more expensive obviously. But the daily coding and redistributing almost doubles the cost. It isn't arithmetic. As you know the video is even more than doubling, but you get rates and expenses by the time you're done it roughly doubles the cost.
Presumably the costs will come down. They are certainly moving in that direction for the last several years. But for us it was a relatively straight-forward decision to give our fans the very best.
Q: What did you see in Flash that impressed you?
Bowman: You see several things. You see a high-grade product that's in some form on 99 percent of the browsers. You've got something that's got mass usage. Secondly you see with Adobe a company committed to the customer experience in video with the Flash Player. We see a partner that continues to invest in their product. They have the same desire that we do. They want the Flash Player to be the best thing anybody has ever seen and we want that. When you partner with people like that, it's not a philosophical discussion. We know where we want to be now how do we get there.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
I dont think "Admin" rights is an issue, because Flash player also suffers from same problem.
The biggest problem with Silverlight is desktop penetration and loosing MLB is going to slow silverlight penetration.
Right.
I agree with Maccess, "The problem is the yet another plug-in issue." I don't use QT for the same reason. One more plugin that's always asking for updates.
You can argue the stats all day, but Flash is on most machines.
There are plenty of reasons to avoid Microsoft's Silverlight. (Being forced to develop with WIndows PCs, or using open source development tools is probably a big problem for some.) The fact that NBC is sticking to Silverlight is no compliment to the technology. They're joined at the hip to Microsoft. What do you expect?
Silverlight is bad. It's flat out the main reason they've dropped it. And they won't be going back. The days of job security being based on buying Microsoft are long over.
I develop software both in silverlight and flash, both has advantages and disadvantages,
Silverlight gets bad publicity just because it is microsoft and penetration in user base,
Adobe bad when it comes to backward compatibility and action script is not a widely available skill set...
Somebody posted a misleading story on Slashdot.org about it. Slashdot is a site full of MS hostile people. Next thing everyone from slashdot that has a netflix account was going to the forums to complain. Sort of like a signature campaign.
They were essentially trying to get netflix to think that there was some huge problem with Silverlight, so that Netflix would move away from using it. Netflix however noticed the trend between the slashdot article and the spike in complaints (followed by the drop in complaints once the story fell of the main page), and realized that silverlight was working just fine.
Is Silverlight to blame for the constant buffering and freezing of the online offerings from NBC, ABC, CBS, and hulu. No, because it's Flash.
"Secondly you see with adobe a company committed to the customer experience in video with the Flash Player. We see a partner that continues to invest in their product." Seriously? Really? Is that why I'm prompted to install a new security update every time I open Adobe Reader?
It's not hard for something (Flash) to be considered great when there is nothing to compare it to. Microsoft has delivered a great alternative with Silverlight.
Work is work. Baseball is not work. Unless you're a sports reporter, then there is no reason to have this. The employer may not exactly appreciate the offer.
I have used Flash on Hulu, CBS, and ABC, and never had any problems. In fact, it seems to be intuitive with my stream, sending lower-res video through when I have a lot going on in the background, high=def when all I am doing is watching.....
I find Microsoft's stance on its support to show its mindset - still scared of Google and open-source software, it will never support Linux and Chrome, but it feels Apple will always be a bit player, therefore they will support the Mac, but in limited porting.....As far as Firefox, no one would sign up with Silverlight if they didn't support it...
I was thinking similar things as I read the article. I've had a very good experience with Silverlight on the Mac, much to my surprise.
However, I would say that the March Madness player this year was spectacularly good. The video quality has been excellent (for live streaming).
I don't really trust Adobe as a company, so I'd love to see an open source alternative emerge. If IBM (+SUN?) and Intel are also people who I could see getting involved.
So what's your argument then? flash player still runs on much more platforms than silverlight,
I don't understand why they use MS or Adobe. Why not use something open like H.264? Wouldn't that cost a lot less and be available to anyone on any computer?
The movies were terrible quality and skipped constantly. why pay for something i can't watch.
Microsoft, as usual, shipped a half baked product and sold it as a solution for which there was no problem for it to fix.
So not going to matter, flash is not installed on the win side, nor can they download. And silverlight not happening, ever, period. So don't matter what rights they have, they can't get to the sites to use it. Oh, and usurping the blocks and controls, as well as watching the stuff is grounds for immediate on the spot termination. No 2nd chance. You get "perp walked" out the door. Better have that DL and keys handing in your pocket as you will not be allowed to remove any thing from your desk. Your personal effects from your desk will be removed, boxed and sent to you later. AFTER being reviewed for company materials.
I recognize that companies need some control over how employees use their network resources, and I agree that people shouldn't get paid to watch TV/sports. But rec9140's arrogant, belligerent, patronizing attitude says everything you need to know about him.
I agree with Martin: I'm glad I don't work for rec's company ... and it has nothing to do with watching TV online.
http://www.techshowwire.com/2008/11/17/adobe-max-2008-mlbcom-selects-the-adobe-flash-platform/
2. Market penetration of player. Adobe WIN
That's the bottom line folks. Keep in mind that Microsoft is REALLY good at sending in a squad of sales reps telling your company why it is best to use their products and why their product is superior. The problem is that any coder that knows heads from tails can look at their code and see why MS = EPIC FAIL. Sharepoint (MOSS) = point proven. Its garbage and soooo expensive.
I remember once, Ballmer said "We want the software market". How arrogant. Meanwhile while he was trying to destroy all non= Microsoft software the Internet grew exponentially and now they are only a 2 bit player in that market. Serves them right for being so arrogant.
How explain..
And apple isn't arrogant at all right?
How does an anti-Microsoft comment equal a pro-Apple comment? Why even bring up Apple? Apple is extremely arrogant, but there's nothing wrong with that. Thinking your technology is superior to everyone else's is par for the course in this industry. At least Apple makes a real effort at pushing open standards.
But Microsoft on the other hand has a history of taking open technology and tweaking it just enough that it's no longer compatible with the original and tying it too its Windows platform; Two examples, Java & HTML. And also trying to steamroll over other proposed standards; OOXML -> ODF. This is what is commonly referred to as abusing your monopoly position.
Bottom Line is that they are both plug-ins and they both need to be installed. They can live on the same browser just fine. Who cares what specific sites use? Just install each plug-in once and away you go.
- by drjoewebb April 6, 2009 1:51 PM PDT
- I use Kubuntu and Ubuntu Linux. Last year I had to keep an XP computer around to listen to mlb.com games. Flash works just fine in Linux, and I'm thrilled they're back. Moonlight (the Novell product to run Silverlight streams) is still in beta, and I'd rather use something tested like Flash.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
Showing 1 of 2 pages (69 Comments)