For the last year plus, it seems as if Microsoft were asleep at the wheel when it came to Web video. Windows Media Player dominated on the desktop, but after Windows Media 9 was released, it seems as if Microsoft sort of lossed interest in the streaming media wars. Real wasn’t a threat anymore and QuickTime still held its nice. Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash though was slowly growing in popularity, particularly for those wanting to embed video in Web pages, especially YouTube. Microsoft seems to be fighting back with Silverlight, a new embeddable Web app for playing video and other media – very similar to what Adobe already offers with Flash.
Silverlight even works in more than just Internet Explorer and on Windows Systems. Microsoft will also offer Expression, a suite of tools for creating multimedia projects and a competitor to Adobe’s new Creative Suite 3 offering. Not to be outdone, Adobe unveiling Adobe Media Player, a standalone application for playing Flash content offline. Both companies are touting their new wares at the NAB show this week in Las Vegas. (I knew I should have gone!) Adobe and Microsoft are now going head to head and each has its own strengths. Adobe already has the advantage in player penetration, hitting 98% of all Internet-enabled desktops. Plus, Flash can be used for more that just video, giving the player/application more flexibility. Microsoft on the other hand still has the better codecs for compressing video for the Web. Even with the newer On2 VP6 codecs (Network World still uses the older Sorenson codecs), Microsoft still seems to cram better quality into less bytes. We went with Flash for our video efforts for the reasons I mentioned above: We could embed it easily and the Flash language as whole gave us a bunch of flexibility. Once Silverlight gets rolling though, might have to take a look at that as an option for delivering video. Some already are lining up behind the new technology: Netflix, Brightcove and Major League Baseball are signing on to take advantage of Silverlight’s HD capabilities. More will soon follow, I am sure. Like the tide raising all ships, the renewed competition between Microsoft and Adobe should help improve the quality of all Web-delivered video.
