Silverlight brings Windows Media Streaming from MS

Over at mac mojo, the Microsoft Mac Business Unit blog, Blair Neumann is expressing his excitement about Silverlight. As we mentioned before, Silverlight is Microsoft's cross-platform, Flash alternative, which is now available in beta form for both Safari and Firefox. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this (as Eddie Hargreaves over at the Apple Blog points out) is that Silverlight will return official Microsoft support for Windows Media streaming to the Mac, "including HD video up to 720p." Since Microsoft stopped development of the Windows Media Player for Mac the primary Windows Media solution on the Mac has been from Flip4Mac (and indeed Microsoft is itself distributing the Flip4Mac plugin). Nonetheless, I still regularly run into problems trying to stream Windows Media videos, so this has to be taken as good news. Unfortunately, however, Microsoft is apparently not going to support PPC Macs in future releases of Silverlight (via Gruber).

Silverlight is a free download from Microsoft.

View Tags

Source: http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/

Categories

Multimedia Video Internet Tools

Over at mac mojo, the Microsoft Mac Business Unit blog, Blair Neumann is expressing his excitement about Silverlight. As we mentioned...

Add a Comment

Sign in »

20 Comments

Filter by:

Shunnabunich

Ack, the troll got deleted while i was writing! Subtract from my quotes accordingly. :P

May 25 2007 at 2:42 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Shunnabunich

Well hey, AIDS is free too, but you don't see me rushing out to "download" that. @1, 5, 14: Microsoft *will* drop Mac support, it's only a matter of time, but of course every Mac user do their part to speed along its trip to the grave by avoiding it like the plague. Sadly, 13's last statement is more than likely prophetic. @18: It's a sign. :) @19: Amen, brother.

May 25 2007 at 2:40 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Christopher Price

I think you may still need Flip4Mac to stream all WMV video. Silverlight right now only streams WMV content when it exists inside of a Silverlight application (or embed, if you prefer).

I don't see the Silverlight plugin offering raw WMV embed support... Flip4Mac has an exclusivity agreement on that. Not that it's a big deal, folks just need to know that they need to install Silverlight and Flip4Mac.

Worse, try telling that to a new Mac buyer who doesn't have a clue about WMV or Silverlight.

- Christopher Price
http://www.phonenews.com

May 25 2007 at 2:34 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

artifex

I wish TUAW had one-click reporting of abusive comments. :)

May 25 2007 at 2:24 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Christopher

If this allows us Mac users to finally use Netflix streaming, then I'm in.

May 25 2007 at 2:21 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Josh

I have tried on multiple occasions to download this from multiple Macs and the DMG is corrupt.

May 25 2007 at 1:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jason

I'm still waiting for the plugin that allows me to play DRMed WMV videos on my Mac. I bought a couple of baseball games from MLB.com before I made "The Switch", and I haven't been able to watch them since.

May 25 2007 at 12:52 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jonas

actually, silverlight is signiffically better than flash thanks to.. wait.. just read this and you'll understand why:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/30/silverlight-the-web-just-got-richer/

May 25 2007 at 12:43 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Gwydion

My god, reading some posts I'm ashamed of being an Macbook and Mini owner.

May 25 2007 at 12:32 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Antonio

It looks more like it wants to be competition for iMovie, but who, in their right Mac mind, would ever use a Microsoft app instead of Apple's perfected software, on their Mac? Nobody, I think.
It's nothing like Flip4Mac. I'm sticking with Telestream for wmv streaming....there's a good chance MS will drop SL support for Macs like they did before with wmp.

May 25 2007 at 11:58 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply