Digital Media

Some subscribers of Major League Baseball's streaming-video service are complaining that the new player, powered by Adobe Flash, isn't ready for the big leagues.

After receiving plenty of favorable reviews from technology blogs, some MLB.com subscribers have complained about stuttering and stalling video while watching on Monday, opening day for baseball. Some of the same problems continued on Tuesday, according to reports. Subscribers of MLB.com's GameDay Audio service also reported that archived games haven't been accessible since Monday.

The irony is that Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM), the unit that oversees the streaming service, discontinued using Microsoft's Silverlight player because of chronic glitches and disagreements over how the player should function, CNET reported on Monday. In the story, Bob Bowman, CEO of MLBAM declined to go into detail about why he dropped Microsoft but said baseball is engaged in an ongoing dispute with Microsoft "because of the significant problems" the league encountered last year.

"I wonder how long before Adobe gets the boot," Timothy Thorson told CNET. Thorson said he is a longtime MLB.com subscriber and listens to the games from his home in Germany, where he works as a pianist and translator. "Baseball is one of the things I miss most about the U.S. There are others like me who get up in the morning and want to listen to the game and now we can't."

The glitches affected less than 1 percent of the company's 500,000 subscribers and were not caused by Adobe's player, said Matt Gould, MLBAM's spokesman. Gould added that as of Wednesday evening, eight games were in progress and three were completed and there were no complaints. "We didn't bat 1.000 on opening day, but there are 2,200 games remaining in the major league season. We look forward to providing the most engaging high-def experience for our subscribers."

Adobe said in a statement: "We've been in regular contact with MLB.com, and have heard nothing but praise about the Flash platform."

Gould said the malfunctions were relatively minor and were far fewer and less severe than last season, when many subscribers were unable to even log in. That was when MLB.com was using Silverlight. Gould said that delivering true high-definition streaming video is a complex task and baseball is only now working out the kinks because it couldn't fully test the video feeds from major league ballparks until opening day. Teams don't play in their home stadiums during spring training.

"We've had very small window to do end-to-end testing," Gould said.

As I discussed the situation with Gould on the phone, Charlie Wagner, a CNET photographer overheard me. He told me he was prevented from seeing a ninth-inning rally by his favorite team, the Minnesota Twins, Tuesday night when his MLB.com video player broke down.

"The video froze on me in the ninth inning," said Wagner, who has subscribed to the service for three years. "I couldn't see the finish until ESPN came on... I was mad."

Despite the problems, he Wagner said he thinks the picture quality is better.

As for Silverlight, the company declined to comment but on a blog post, Steve Sklepowich, a Microsoft executive, did challenge one of Bowman's assertions about Adobe. Bowman suggested that Adobe was a better fit for baseball because of Flash's wide consumer adoption.

"While Flash 9 may have high penetration," Sklepowich wrote, "the Swarmcast NexDef plug-in that helps power MLB's HD experience has virtually no adoption. Ubiquity here is a red herring. What customers really want are high quality solutions. Silverlight has been doing that since its inception and already supports the ability to deliver true HD using IIS Smooth Streaming with no additional plug-in required."

Perhaps Bowman described the situation best this week when he said that streaming video on the Web isn't as trustworthy yet as television. "You turn on the TV and it just works," he said. "(Internet video) still has a ways to go."

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.

Netflix said on Wednesday that the next version of Silverlight shows some promise in helping ease recent issues that some users have had while trying to stream videos on lower-end computers.

"There are test configurations in our lab where we are seeing an improvement," said Kevin McEntee, vice president of Web development for Netflix. McEntee told CNET News that the company went out and bought computers such as an Asus Netbook that users had said were causing problems. In some cases, the low-end machines weren't able to keep up with the video and were dropping frames, McEntee said.

The next version of Silverlight holds promise, McEntee said, by allowing the load to be shared by the graphics and main processors, whereas the current version puts all the strain on the CPU.

"There was a significant improvement using Silverlight 3," McEntee said. "We think we can run on a wide range of lower-end machines that we don't run (well) on today."

However, those experiencing problems will have to wait a bit. Silverlight 3 just entered beta, with a final release not expected until sometime before the end of the year. A Silverlight 3-based Netflix player would come sometime after that, he said.

"I don't anticipate we would do it until Silverlight 3 is released as a final (version)," he said.

McEntee said that Netflix originally planned to use Silverlight only to create a Mac version of its streaming player, but decided to shift entirely to Silverlight because it lets them offer a single player that works on multiple platforms and on multiple browsers.

The biggest downside, he said, is that many people still don't have Silverlight, meaning customers have to download the program before they can watch their first movie.

"We're waiting for Silverlight to have more and more penetration," McEntee said. "We would love to be able to have (customers) push the blue play button and it just plays."

For now, Netflix is focused on offering streaming video for the PC and television rather than actively working on an option that would also get the content onto cell phones and iPods.

"We don't have any imminent plans for phones or iPods or anything with a smaller screen," said company spokesman Steve Swasey. "At some point--and we haven't said when--we would be interested in getting into other devices."

Microsoft has had a mixed track record with big-name customers for Silverlight. NBC used Silverlight to offer on-demand and live video from the Beijing Olympics. On Wednesday, NBC's Perkins Miller announced at Mix that the network would also be using Microsoft's technology for the 2010 winter games in Vancouver.

Major League Baseball, meanwhile, recently said it was dropping Silverlight for its video service and going with Adobe's Flash.

Netflix is trying to locate the source of a series of glitches that some users of the company's streaming service are blaming on Microsoft's Silverlight video player.

Over the weekend, a steady stream of angry messages was posted to Netflix's blog. The complaints range from choppy video, to audio that doesn't sync with the picture, to grainy image quality.

The complaints began accumulating soon after the Web's largest video-rental service switched to Microsoft's Silverlight in November. The posts appear to have trickled in until last weekend, when a score of customers began reporting problems.

"The quality of the video looks like bad VHS," wrote someone on the Netflix who identified themselves as Steve-O. "I use an Acer Netbook over my home network and the quality is poor. Also, I cannot even see the button to make the video full screen (using Acer One Netbook with Firefox browser). However, I imagine this will make the quality even worse. What a disaster."

Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey said the company, which now has more than 10 million subscribers, has yet to pinpoint the cause of the malfunctions. He added that only a small percentage of customers have complained but that the company continues to look for a fix.

Swasey defended Silverlight. He said the company has received mostly kudos from customers after switching to the software last fall. A Microsoft spokeswoman declined to comment.

"The new player is far better," Swasey said. "It's faster, more reliable and provides greater stability. The vast majority of Netflix members have had a great experience."

The other major complaint from Netflix customers who posted to the company blog this weekend is that it wasn't made clear there was no way to opt out once they switched to the Silverlight player.

"I certainly feel that Netflix was not forthright in getting me to 'upgrade' to the new viewer (Silverlight)," said someone who posted under the name Jerry. "I don't have a beef with Microsoft. I'll support most technologies that work appropriately--and that is where we have come to a problem. The new viewer simply does not work well enough."

Silverlight has received mixed reviews in the past year. NBC chose Silverlight to stream video of the 2008 Summer Olympics and the company won some favorable reviews. For the games' opening ceremony, Silverlight helped deliver more than 70 million page views in one evening.

But after the conclusion of the games, NBC went back to using Flash. Another setback for Microsoft came when Major League Baseball Advanced Media, the group that streams baseball games over the Web, decided to drop Silverlight.

Just as President-elect Barack Obama has been busy assembling his Cabinet, the Presidential Inaugural Committee has been busy selecting providers of tech services for this week's inaugural festivities.

The PIC has already made arrangements with YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr. The latest appointee? Microsoft's Silverlight Media Player, which has been tapped to enable live and on-demand video streaming of Tuesday's ceremony on the PIC Web site.

The PIC will also stream video of a Baltimore event on the Whistle Stop Tour that will take the President-elect and Vice President-elect Joe Biden to Washington, D.C., from Philadelphia.

This is not Silverlight's first major foray into politics. In August of last year, the Democratic National Convention Committee used Silverlight to stream convention proceedings, including President-elect Obama's acceptance speech.

Silverlight's participation in the inauguration could help Microsoft boost the momentum it gained from its work with NBC streaming live coverage for last summer's Olympics in Beijing. Over a 17-day period, Microsoft said NBCOlympics.com had more than 50 million unique visitors, resulting in 1.3 billion page views, 70 million video streams, and 600 million minutes of video watched.

After initial sluggish demand for the browser plug-in, the software maker said the Olympics helped boost Silverlight's U.S. penetration by 30 percent.

Silverlight, a competitor to Flash, debuted in 2007, and the final version of the Silverlight 2 media player came out in October. Among the new features are support for digital rights management technology, improved cross-platform support and deep zoom technology.

Microsoft is losing MLB.com, Major League Baseball's online unit and one of the Web's most successful subscription services, as a Silverlight customer.

MLB Advanced Media said Monday it will use Adobe's Flash Platform to deliver all live and on-demand video starting next year.

The deal, announced at the Adobe Max conference running in San Francisco this week, hands Adobe one of the largest and likely most profitable video services out there. MLB.com has signed up more than 1.5 million subscribers since 2003 and streams more than 2,500 regular and postseason games annually. Moreover, MLBAM has been a technological leader and is influential among Web video services.

"Microsoft has appreciated the partnership of MLB.com," said Microsoft Vice President Scott Guthrie. "Microsoft continues to be very pleased with the success of Silverlight. We have a great ecosystem that includes more than 150 partners."

Adobe's Flash Player is by far the largest video platform, installed on more than 98 percent of Web-connected content, the company said.

"Flash provides a TV-like experience. You turn it on and it works," said Bob Bowman, president and CEO of MLBAM. "We want it to be flexible so we can add features...and it's got to be scalable. We are the largest server of live entertainment in the country. Whether we are serving 20,000 for one game or 250,000 for another game, it's got to be scalable over periods of time like nothing else."

Bowman was tight-lipped when asked to provide specifics for how Adobe's Flash outperforms Microsoft Silverlight. "I'm going to reserve all my comments on Silverlight and suggest any comments I have, positive or negative, will be discussed at a later date."

Adobe's news comes on the same day that Guthrie posted a blog announcing a few details on Silverlight 3, which is due out next year.

Click here for more news on Adobe's Max conference.

Adobe Systems' Flash technology may not have qualified for the Olympics, but it is in tip-top shape for the National Football League season just getting under way.

With the bulk of NFL teams hitting the gridiron in earnest Sunday, it'll be Flash that delivers the live video streaming on the Web of NBC's Sunday Night Football games. This marks the first time that full-length NFL games are widely available online in the U.S., according to Adobe and the NFL.

(Credit: Adobe Systems)

The NFL-Adobe partnership wouldn't normally be quite so notable--after all, Flash is one of the most well-established technologies on the Web. But it was only a few short weeks ago that NBC had delivered streaming video from the Beijing Olympics courtesy of a technology that's looking to overturn Flash's dominance: Microsoft Silverlight.

The Olympics deal no doubt stuck in Adobe's craw; NBC has said that it initially expected to use Flash for the Olympics. Adobe's press release on the NFL deal certainly doesn't mention the upstart Silverlight by name, but it does get in a subtle bit of trash-talking--the widespread, existing installation of Flash on desktop PCs "will enable fans to access NFL games on the Web without having to download additional software."

Anyone who wanted to watch NBC's online streaming of the Olympics first had to download Silverlight, an additional step that some folks may not have been ready to take.

Its name notwithstanding, the Web-streamed Sunday Night Football Extra (delivered via NFL.com and NBCSports.com) made its debut Thursday, with the season's inaugural game between the Washington Redskins and last season's Super Bowl champions, the New York Giants. On Sunday, the streaming video will start up on its namesake day with the Week 1 nighttime contest between the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts.

Beyond the live streaming, fans get some interactive extras, including alternative camera angles, in-game highlights, live statistics, and a live blog.

The experience may be something of a mixed bag. Writing at Silicon Alley Insider, Michael Learmouth had this to say about Thursday night's streaming video:

We gave it a try and there were some hiccups. Inititally, we couldn't get the live stream, and were told we had been placed in a queue 'due to overwhelming demand.'

Once the video began, it was pixelated and jumpy, and there's no full-screen mode. But there were some cool features, such as a 'star cam' trained on individual players like Fred Smoot and Plaxico Burress.

We were asked to watch a Sprint pre-roll ad to get to the video, and there were a few online ads within the broadcast, but not nearly as many as on TV. In fact, during most TV ad breaks, online viewers were sent to the NFL network studio for recaps of other games, which is nice but perhaps a sign advertising for the Webcast wasn't sold out.

As for the Flash-Silverlight competition, that will have to play itself out over time. As noted by Paul Glazowski at the Mashable blog:

It's not an impossibility for Silverlight to grow, mind you. Given the right level of attention to the platform, Microsoft could mark its Olympic foray as only the first big starter in the long slog toward mass adoption. But 'could' is the key word. The hill climbs (yes, climbs plural) will be trying.

One key challenge, Glazowski says, is "to convince the public of its validity and utility in the presence" of a "semi-household" name like Flash.

Google's DoubleClick technology now can be used to deliver video advertising shown with Microsoft's Silverlight technology, and it will be used for that purpose with the Olympics video that NBC Universal plans to show online using a player based on Silverlight 2.

Google announced the Silverlight ad capability, called DoubleClick In-Stream, on Tuesday. It already could be used to deliver video ads using Flash, RealMedia, and Windows Media technology. In-Stream also can show static ads within video, which Microsoft and NBC concluded was the best approach for live video.

NBC Universal, already a DoubleClick customer, was bullish about the Sliverlight support. "Thanks to DoubleClick, In-Stream's new support for Silverlight 2, we are able to monetize our groundbreaking online-video coverage on the same platform we already use for display and mobile advertising. This lets our sales and operations teams work together really efficiently," Steven Gold, vice president of sales planning and operations at NBC Universal Digital Media, said in a statement.

(Credit: Susan Dove/CNET News)

Microsoft is betting on the Olympics to help spur adoption of Silverlight, a browser plug-in technology that competes with Adobe Systems' Flash for bringing multimedia, animation, and other rich content to the Web. Distributing the Olympics online coverage, both prepackaged and live, is a technologically complicated task given how popular the sporting event is among viewers.

DoubleClick In-Stream is integrated with Google's DART technology for letting publishers serve ads over the Internet as well as target ads at specific categories of users, track ad campaign success, and create ad forecasts.

Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.