Streaming Media - June/July 2008 - (Page 39) In the RIA space, Adobe is Microsoft’s biggest threat. In the post-DOJ era, you can’t easily predict that Microsoft will eventually win the epic video playback technology battle that lies ahead. Just as easily as Microsoft took down the likes of Wang, Lotus, Word Perfect, Borland, Novell, and a host of others, so too is Microsoft vulnerable to becoming a footnote in the digital media era. With that as an introduction, here is a summary of the leading video playback technology providers who seem to have relevant technology in the space today. Microsoft Silverlight and Windows Media Technologies Microsoft’s streaming and creative technologies have lagged behind Adobe’s, and, as a result, Microsoft has lost significant market share to Adobe in the streaming media market. With the announcement of Silverlight 2.0, which will be supported by AOL and Nokia, Microsoft is looking for significant penetration of desktop deployments of the new streaming technology in the next few months. Microsoft is also leveraging its leadership in the development community with .NET and Visual Studios to help it gain new ground in the digital media space. Microsoft probably did one of the smartest things ever when it integrated Silverlight Expression, the company’s creative design application, with Visual Studios, its software development tool. Developers I spoke with love this integration, which is allowing many of them to develop rich internet applications (RIAs) they normally would not have been able to, at least not as easily and cost effectively. “This is a platform that is richly programmable; it has stunning graphics/UI capabilities and interactivity that rivals that of true desktop applications,” says Andrew Brust, lead author of Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and chief of new technology for consulting firm twentysix New York. “The fact that version 2.0 is based on .NET means Silverlight will work extremely well in corporate environments as well as consumer scenarios and that the available programming talent is quite abundant.” With new features, such as bitrate throttling that can help content providers better manage cost (content providers pay for what users actually receive, not what a server can deliver), and security features, via Silverlight’s new web playlists that force users to play advertising related to content they want to watch, Silverlight has a lot to offer content distributors. “Think of bitrate throttling as a way to save money and think of web playlists as a way to make money,” says Steve Sklepowich, group product manager in the developer division at Microsoft Corp. Silverlight 2.0 has a tight integration with Visual Studios and other new creative tools that simplify the WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM 39 http://www.digital-rapids.com http://www.digital-rapids.com http://WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM
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