Silverlight 3 debuts ahead of Friday's launch
The final version of Silverlight 3 has been released to the Web, a day ahead of the product's launch event in San Francisco.
The release, noted by enthusiast site Neowin, marks Microsoft's latest effort to take on Adobe's Flash.
Microsoft detailed Silverlight 3 at the Mix09 event in March, releasing a beta version of the software.
Among the product's new features is technology that allows the software to utilize a PC's hardware to accelerate graphics processing. It also allows for programs that run outside a browser on both the PC and Mac.
NBC has said it will use Silverlight to broadcast the 2010 Winter Olympics from Vancouver. The technology will allow the Games to be broadcast in 720p HD quality as well as provide a TiVo-like ability to pause and rewind a live stream.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
As for being a resource hog on a Mac, not sure how much more baggage will be required to run on OS X. I expect there will be more, just as Quicktime takes up more resouces on a PC than on OS X.
Personally, I'd much rather have a simple QuickTime H.264 video stream than either Flash or Silverlight but if I had to choose between them then I'd go for Silverlight, despite the fact that choosing Microsoft over Adobe makes me feel dirty.
This is certainly not to say that Silverlight is good - just that Adobe Flash is unbelievably crap on the Mac. Why Adobe are unable to achieve what Microsoft has in just a couple of years is quite beyond me.
http://www.iis.net/media/experiencesmoothstreaming
This is a link to the movie - wow oh wow. Of course those with an Xbox 360 are experiencing this benefits already - I can stream 720p without a hickup. Amazing technology!
I hate going to a site and having no choice about formats. I simply skip things that require QuickTime (the POS it is)
And I'm sure those that like QT feel the same way about Silverlight only sites...
Silverlight 3 adds H.264 support, so maybe that will improve things.
It would appear you may need to service your system or take it to a professional technician. I have none of the problems you described on my Acer Aspire One and the netbooks all have nearly identical system specs.
Could you describe your issues a bit more clearly and detailed? Perhaps we can help you with your system issues.
I think the problem at the moment is that the open-source alternatives simply aren't very good at the moment. They either need to improve to the point that they deliver the performance of proprietary codecs or one of the manufacturers is persuaded release their product under an open-source license.
But I'm for avoiding more plugins and just deal with HTML5.
Perhaps Silverlight 3 will actually be worthwhile, maybe not.
I stream Netflix (PC and xbox) -- Silverlight rocks my friend!
As for xBox and PC streaming, well yeah, I can stream all formats equally well on those kind of platforms. It's the netbooks, with limited resources, where the differences are really evident.
"sorry DMAN and Dhav- but you are wrong. Streaming in Silverlight on a netbook is the weakest link."
Let it be known that you are the one having this issue- I have never seen this problem on any the netbooks I work on, and I haven't read anything about this online. It may be a very much isolated case of your own system configuration.
It is posible other people have had trouble too. It just isn't known very well. The problems you describe I cannot reproduce on my rather generic Acer Aspire One netbook. It just works fine.
Vegaman, I you can claim what you want, but you routinely exaggerate and make stuff up, especially when it comes to Apple, so why should I believe you exactly?
But you must do good business ripping off customers with $1200 MacBook Air replacement screens.
Where exactly?
Check out:
http://www.iis.net/media/experiencesmoothstreaming
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=2050e580-f1d5-4040-bb09-e6185591b6b5
Cody
Silverlight or Quicktime. Silverlight please.
Not to mention Silverlight has very good developer tools and the such using something like Expression Studio 2.
And for those of you who prefer Quicktime, have you even seen the features that Silverlight offers? Have you even watched the SmoothStreaming demo?
Because quite simply, Silverlight kicks ass. and is better than Flash or Quicktime. Best of all, it uses low system resouces unlike Flash and Quicktime. Flash actually freezes systems for goodness sake!
-Enoch
That said, it doesn't matter how good or bad QT is if it doesn't provide content I'm interested in.
Generally spreaking, yes QT on a PC is a POS. My digital camera takes MOVs and I just reencode them rather than install that junk version of the software on my computer.
in the BINARY world, Ina falls in the FUZZY LOGIC territory!!! :-)
"Among the new features of Silverlight 3 is the ability to tap a computer's graphics processor to offer hardware acceleration of the video (both PC and Mac)."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10199108-56.html
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/install.aspx
- by digish777 July 10, 2009 10:14 PM PDT
- It is nice. The movie: http://www.iis.net/media/experiencesmoothstreaming
- Reply to this comment
-
Showing 1 of 2 pages (57 Comments)did not know, movies could be played this way. it is so smooth. and the slider moves to any place you want it to. plays the movie fast from the place the cursor is lifted. does not know why the silver light is not implement in movie playing in other sites. may be people are very much used to flash, would not want ot get out. ,be linux is the reason.