Netflix said Wednesday that it is midway through a transition to HTML5 for its laptop streaming technology at the expense of Microsoft's Silverlight.
The move, delivered, in Netflix's third quarter letter to investors highlighted a four-year effort to migrate from Silverlight. In the letter, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells said:
"We are midway through switching to native HTML5 streaming for our laptop players, eliminating downloads (of Silverlight) and improving the consumer proposition with a smoother playback experience and longer battery life. This has been a successful four-year effort to get strong DRM integrated into the major browsers."
On other tech issues, Netflix highlighted that it is able to support more set-top boxes and that it is updating its recommendation engine, which now includes visual searches on the Web and mobile.
Among other items:
- Netflix continued to emphasize its support for net neutrality and reiterated that it wants U.S. regulators to block the Time Warner Cable and Comcast merger.
- Hastings and Wells weren't surprised by HBO's move to offer Web subscriptions and noted that it has expected Time Warner's pay network to be Netflix's principal rival.
- As for earnings, Netflix delivered third quarter net income of $59 million, or 96 cents a share, on revenue of $1.22 billion. For the fourth quarter, Netflix is projecting earnings of $27 million, or 44 cents a share, on revenue of $1.3 billion.
Here's the breakdown:
