Microsoft loses MLB but keeps swinging

November 21, 2008, 1:55pm PST | Length: 00:01:17

ZDNet Senior Editor Sam Diaz talks about the recent announcement by Major League Baseball to drop Microsoft’s Silverlight service for Adobe's Flash player. Diaz says it's a setback for Microsoft but he doesn't believe the loss of business will have long lasting effects since the company has also signed deals with NBC and Netflix.

Transcript

Microsoft loses MLB but keeps swinging

>> For a while there, it seemed like Microsoft was building some momentum around Silverlight, the video streaming software that was supposed to challenge the established Adobe Flash player. Silverlight powered NBC's online coverage of the summer Olympics, it recently scored a deal with Netflix to stream downloaded videos, and the reviews for its Mac version were pretty favorable. But the big score seemed to be Major League Baseball, which was offering streaming clips of games over the league's website, until MLB pulled the plug that is. Baseball is going back to Adobe, and no one has really offered a reason why, at least not yet. Maybe it had something to do with Flash already being installed on a majority of computers, as opposed to Silverlight, which requires new users to download a plug in to play a clip. If you're watching You Tube, you already have Flash installed. Sure, it is a setback for Microsoft, but let's not count Silverlight out of the game just yet. Downloading Silverlight is a minor inconvenience, but once you do it, you're done. If that web video you're trying to watch is really worth it, you'll take the extra minute it takes to install Silverlight, Flash, or whatever else you need to start that stream.

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MLB dropping Silverlight

Maybe part of the reason to drop Silverlight was that so
many computers can't run the newer version 2 instead of
just v1. With Linux and Mac PPC not allowed to use v2 of
Silverlight there are lots of systems that can't get the
content people want. Not everyone can get a new
computer every 3 or 4 years. I use a Mac Mini from 2004
and a Powerbook from 2001 and can use Silverlight v1. It
works well and I have no complaints about Silverlight or
Flash. I couldn't watch the Olympics online because I can't
get Silverlight v2 to run on either machine.
Mr_Dave
24th Nov 2008
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- Flag
RE: Microsoft's new failing media player: Silverlight

Silver light will only install on XP post Sp2 or Vista
this sucks
Also on the Mac, Sivelight won't go on Panther
or anything lacking a intel processor.
this also sucks.

when you install silverlight, it makes your XP machine slow like Vista....

when Microsoft writes a decent piece of optional software people will adopt it
(not talking about OS monopoly here!)
so don't worry, they'll bundle it with Windows 7 and you'll have to use it
dcsos
2nd Dec 2008
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