Remember Silverlight? Well, Netflix is putting Microsoft’s video playback system to good use by offering “Watch Instantly” functionality under OS X “by the end of the year.”
Since “Watch Instantly” was introduced about two years ago Macintosh and Linux users have been complaining bitterly about Netflix’s failure to offer the service on their browsers of choice. The company has already offered streaming via dedicated hardware and specially programmed home theater and gaming devices.
The release, below, tells us to expect the Silverlight-powered service to go live by the end of the year.
NETFLIX BEGINS ROLL-OUT OF 2ND GENERATION
MEDIA PLAYER FOR INSTANT STREAMING
ON WINDOWS PCs AND INTEL MACSBased on Microsoft Silverlight, New Player Features Enhanced Dynamic Streaming, First-Time Use for Macs and Breakthrough Navigation for Fast-Forward and Rewind
LOS GATOS, Calif., October 27, 2008 – Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX), the world’s largest online movie rental service, today announced it has begun the deployment of Microsoft Silverlight to enhance the instant watching component of the Netflix service and to allow subscribers for the first time to watch movies and TV episodes instantly on their Intel-based Apple Macintosh computers. The deployment, which will initially touch a small percentage of new Netflix subscribers, is the first step in an anticipated roll-out of the new platform to all Netflix subscribers by the end of the year.
Silverlight is designed for delivery of cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences inside a Web browser. It is expected that Netflix members who watch movies and TV episodes instantly on their computers will enjoy a faster, easier connection and a more robust viewing experience with Silverlight, due to the quality built directly into the player. Among the viewing enhancements with the new player is a breakthrough in timeline navigation that vastly improves the use of fast-forwarding and rewinding. The new Netflix player takes advantage of Play Ready DRM, which is built into Silverlight, for the playback of protected content on both Windows-based PCs and on Macs. That had not been possible with previous generation technologies.
“Silverlight with Play Ready offers a powerful and secure toolkit for delivery of dynamic streaming, which offers faster start-up, and higher quality video, adapted in real time to users’ connection speeds,” said Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt. “Members who enjoy watching movies and TV episodes from the growing library of choices that can be instantly streamed at Netflix will be thrilled with this next generation improvement of access and quality, on a broader range of platforms, including Intel Macs and Firefox.”
“Instantly streaming from Netflix directly addresses the needs and wants of today’s Web users by providing on-demand, high-quality online video,” said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft Corp. “By using Silverlight, Netflix can deliver to its subscribers a higher quality video experience on the Web, on more platforms.”
Silverlight was tried and proven this summer as NBCOlympics.com streamed thousands of hours of live and on-demand online video for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
For Macintosh users, the Silverlight player will work only on Intel-based Macs, which currently account for roughly three-fourths of Mac units operated by Netflix subscribers.
The Netflix instant watching catalog of more than 12,000 choices continues to grow with significant new titles from CBS, the Disney Channel and Starz Play, which the company announced recently. In addition to watching instantly on the PC and Mac via Silverlight, Netflix members can enjoy the same movies and TV episodes on their television with a Netflix ready device such as the Netflix Player by Roku, which was introduced in May, the LG Electronics BD300 Blu-ray disc player and the Samsung BD-P2550 and BD-P2500 Blu-ray disc players, which are on sale now at retailers nationwide, and, soon, the Microsoft Xbox 360.
I’ve been waiting for this for awhile. I’ve been reading about this rumor for the past year (hackingnetflix.com). Hopefully it actually comes out this time.
Sounds interesting:) but I like using RealPlayer
That doesn’t make any sense. No one likes using RealPlayer.
ROTFL – oh, that is so true.
Remember Silverlgiht? You douche.
If you get outside of your circle, you’ll realize that the adoption of Silverlight is rapidly growing.
I’ve only seen it used by websites and companies owned by Microsoft.
Could you list some examples to show that it is “rapidly growing”
That’s funny. I didn’t know Microsoft owned NBC or the Olympics.
MLB uses silverlight too to show highlights of games
Microsoft/MSN ran the NBC olympic websites. In fact, NBC has had a technology partnership with Microsoft for years (hence MSNBC).
So, is that the only example?
Going to NBC it seems they still use flash for at least some of their video streaming. I’m not saying that flash is better than silverlight or that silverlight is better than flash. I just haven’t a lot of silverlight use. The only examples that I could think of were the Olympics and the banjo and Kazooie website.
nba.com uses silverlight for it’s video highlights too. although i *would* still be hesitant to say that its adoption is ‘rapidly growing’. perhaps – sort of growing.
“Hasn’t been completely abandoned” is close to accurate.
Is this the same type of tech use for sites such as FanCast and Hulu? If it is, then it should work fine.
I thought the original idea of NetFlix wouldn’t work. So, don’t take any stock tips from me.
Is this the same type of tech used for Fancast and Hulu? If it is, it should work fine.
Cool. Let’s hope this time they do it.
Fair enough, now why don’t they just roll it the heck out. They’ve been promising this since Watch Instantly was first announced and even though they’ve announced it, you still can’t use it, I don’t care about announcements, I want to see it on my own computer before I care.
I sure hope they are using the Move Networks Silverlight, like on the HD on the Democratic National Convention and not the low quality stuff the Olympics had.
Patrick, I agree completely. I was blown away by the quality of the HD stream from the DNC through the Move player (although the content was questionable). Didn’t MS announce that they were integrating the Move player into Silverlight, or did I imagine that?
you didn`t dreamed just that is not about the player. it about the media hosting backend.
yeah…. “remember silverlight…. that’s pretty link baity. no likey.
I think Microsoft should be given a hand for this deal and for making software that runs on Mac. This move really ups the ante on getting those anti-MS mac users to make a choice. It’s Microsoft’s “digital ultimatum” — accept Silverlight, get content that rivals cable TV.
Purely speculating, but how much did Microsoft pay Netflix for this? Oh right, a sweet deal with the XBox. Anyone want to bet on an MA between these two?
They didn`t paid anything. but Flash nor Flex can offer the kind of performance, analytics and drm needed for the service to work. this is a case of scratching back from netflix. a thank you for the xbox deal.
As someone who spent most of the last decade delivering streaming media on the web I have to say the Adaptive Streaming stuff that Silverlight is offering blows anything Flash has yet to offer out of the water.
With DNC and Olympics for instance the stream was able to adjust bit-rate on the fly – no pausing or rebuffering (as it connected to a new source) just seamless transition… and it could do that on both change of bandwidth conditions or change of viewer window size.
Flash and DRM … obfuscation isn’t DRM. PlayReady is.
Flash video streaming has on the fly bit-rate adjustment. Its fairly easy to setup, not sure why it isn’t used more.
Does this mean that Linux people can get later on at some point using Monolight?
Maybe this will get Adobe to write some good code for that poor excuse of software that Flash is on the Mac.
Bad idea!! For one I can’t get Silverlight to work on my Mac. And Second, Netflix just lost a customer Just Because they’re using Silverlight!
are you using an Intel or a PowerPC based Mac?
Shouldn’t be a problem with Silverlight 2.0 on Intel based Macs, though the PowerPC ones only run Silverlight 1.0 :(
Silverlight? Between Flash and Silverlight they chose Silverlight?!; I donno… just sounds unwise (ask engineers). Frankly, on another note, I refuse to add any Microsoft Addons. I’ve ‘Upgraded’ from Vista to XP a few weeks ago.
They didn’t “choose” Silverlight; it was the only thing that they could get to work at streaming movies at a certain level of quality with DRM. If they could’ve gotten Flash to work, they would’ve had this up and working on the Mac a long time ago, but the quality would have sucked because Flash on the Mac is far from ideal. Meanwhile, they weren’t allowed to use Apple’s DRM and Hollywood wasn’t about to let them stream any movies without DRM.
good
what is netflix?
what is silverlight?
what is mac?
dang, us linux lusers miss out on all the good stuff, huh?
Instantly streaming from Netflix directly addresses the needs and wants of today’s Web users by providing on-demand, high-quality online video
Here we go!!
Instantly streaming from Netflix directly addresses the needs and wants of today’s Web users by providing on-demand, high-quality online video
Here we go!!
Wow, I think I am just about ready to take the plunge and switch to MAC, I am getting so tired of this Vista nonsense.
Jeff
http://www.anonymity.cz.tc
Silverlight? Oh wait, the CEO of Netflix is on Microsoft’s board. That probably had something to do with it. Flash has proven itself.
What’s wrong with native video tag in HTML?
Silverlight is MS’s newest lock-in scheme.
Netflix is bought (Netflix’ CEO on M$ board!)
The Microsoft “dynamic streaming”. Great, this means you can get hd video or a slide show (or just audio) depending if your neighbourhood is downloading porn. While watching a movie you can get a deformed Jessica alba on a traffic peak, no thanks. Another microsoft annoying thing sold as a feature.
I though that kind of stream was already judged by history, in favour of “just buffering”. Like most of the flash video sites, you may have to wait but when you see the video it’s how it was intent to be.
Despite microsoft propaganda, and monopolistic marketing (which every smart person shouldn’t support (Bush had won twice, I know, people are stupid)), Flash can totally handle this as h264 standard (not yet supported from silverlight, they hate standards), as other sites do, and it’s already installed in virtually all computers, even linux. Probably Microsoft has just signed a check for someone, as they use to (off course, a legitimate strategy, like subprimes).
if Flash could do it… why don’t they?
Apart from small window experience, ad supported sites where are the full length, DRM protected movies being streamed in Flash?
Oh, and in case you missed the announcement H.264 support is coming in Silverlight
I don’t know why the don’t use it, as I said Microsoft is used to pay in order to push his things, it’s a well know habit that a monopoly can perform. In this case I don’t know why, netflix can just have a Visual Basic consultant that pushed silverlight, like in other sites some still use realplayer which had the same “dynamic streaming” logic and is almost dead.
However support silverlight is a very stupid thing, but I understand that it could be convenient for visual studio “programmers”. If you know the history, you know why the microsoft strategy is a problem for the evolution of IT. IE was a classic example how a monopoly can slow down progress.
But I think it’s a better solution that download the whole Media Player to see a video that an uneducated developer just drop on the web.
I know Sliverlight is going to support h.264, it’s why I wrote “not yet”, next version. They don’t want to, they have to.
Microsoft is a partner of Netflix.
I say WTF apple. They force their software on people, and then complain when another company won’t do it their way? This is just apple being a pissy brat and putting work onto everybody else, like usual.
Apple is just a smaller microsoft, even closer. On the other hand Adobe (Flash) is opening lot of things.
I’m no fancy engineer, but what’s the delay? They have the movies and they’ve decided on the format. Just run it. I’ve got a Windows VM (a $280 investment) so I watch lots of instant Netflix already but it’d be nice to have a Mac native way to view.
The only other service I care about that requires Silverlight is MLB.TV. Since I pay to watch that, I grudgingly accepted this piece of Microsoft bloatware. Mostly I hate how Silverlight forces viewing to happen in the browser, because I prefer to view long-form programs in the Quicktime player. The playback is smoother when the app doing the playing is not dividing its attention between the player window and other browser tabs.
Crappy video delivery platforms are so late nineties.
Flash is already the “de facto” standard for video on the web and there are many reasons for it. I for one prefer using open technologies like native HTML video, but even so I must admit Flash can’t be beaten for video delivery today, on technical grounds. Now, choosing SilverLight for it is just plain dumb. The only “feature” it adds is DRM crap.
Sure, Flash is the “de facto” standard FOR NOW. Just like DOS was the “de facto” standard back in the 80’s. There’s always room for healthy competition, and FYI – Silverlight actually does video *gasp* BETTER than Flash (especially streaming video) with higher quality to boot. Choosing SilverLight wasn’t dumb – it was the only option for Netflix with the movie studios demanding DRM. It was a business decision, and millions more customers got access to streaming video as a result. Get your head out of the sand and do some actual research into Silverlight. I think you’d be very surprised at the things it can do that Flash doesn’t. Stop being a Microsoft hater just because you think it’s cool.
The gap between Flash and Silverlight is getting smaller. Flash now has full encrypted video streams over the RTMPE protocol so you can encrypt your On2 video or H.264 and do on the fly bit-rate adjustments ( I have not tried both at the same time yet but I assume it could be made to work ). Flash 10 just came out with 3d and gpu acceleration.
extend, embrace…
apple fell for it. at this point m$ doesnt even try to pull this kind of thing over with the linux crowd.
lol Realplayer. Please tell me you’re joking.
Adobe just has plain crap software… And overpriced if you have to buy the real versions.
Invasive, almost as bad as Apple software… buggy
adobe is more bloated and ancient than anything MS has out there…
Awesome. I have a pc right now, so there isn’t any problem with watching netflix movies online, but I was planning on picking up a Macbook Pro whenever they release a model with a matte screen. Hopefully this launches before the matte Macbook does.
NBC partnered with Microsoft to bring the 08 Olympics online through the use of Silverlight. I questioned it in the beginning, but I had to say for once that I was really impressed with what Microsoft had done with the product. Silverlight was fairly seamless and I was able to hop in and out of various video streams (different sports) whether it was live or archived. (The PIP feature was equally impressive). I’ve been bitter about Netflix’s Watch Instantly feature not supporting Mac Safari/Firefox, but it’s exciting to hear that they’re going to be leveraging Silverlight.
NBC dropped silverlight half way through the olympics, If I remember correctly. Everything was ported to Adobe Flash.
Jon — that is HUGELY false of a statement.
SILVERLIGHT?
FUCK THAT
Sweet! I’ve heard rumors about this awhile back so this is great news. Can’t wait!
silverlight blows goats!!
Netflix, ps3 player … pleaaaaaase.
This is going to be really fun
to see movies this easily.
The variety is huge just like
the company. I wonder how this
will effect dvd sales.
thanks from tony
NOOOO! Silverlight OSX maxxed-out my CPU so much that video SKIPPED on my dual-core mac. I had to bootcamp XP to watch the Olympics.
Flash video still uses too much CPU but at least it WORKS.
they have to use silverlight since they’re drm backend is windows media. it’s not because flash is better or worse than silverlight
does silverlight require an expensive media server to enable the adaptive bitrate streaming?
i downloaded my update for silverlight and when i click watch instantly it is still just telling me to install the plug-in and will not let me watch.. help me?
Yet a new reason to lament Silverlight’s refusal to work with PowerPC macs…
My Dell Mini9 running OSX is on a build for the Intel Atom… which runs as a PowerPC grrr
Hey PowerPC Hackintoshers:
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/3707/mac-os-x-install-silverlight-2-on-non-intel-systems-ie-powerpc-or-osx86-installs/
Works like a charm on Dell Mini9.