Microsoft Green Lights Silverlight

Along with the platform launch itself, several other companies announced support for Silverlight. Akamai Technologies, Brightcove, Eyeblaster, Limelight Networks, Major League Baseball, NaviSite Inc., Netflix, Pinnacle Systems Inc., Rhozet Corp., Skinkers, Sonic Solutions, Tarari Inc., Telestream Inc. and Winnov all plan to offer Silverlight for viewers and customers.

“We’ve consistently heard from the media companies that they want the ability to easily implement key technologies for Internet video and rich broadband experiences,” said Bob Mason, chief technology officer at Brightcove.

“With the release of Silverlight, Microsoft is bringing rich interactive experiences coupled with the VC-1 video standard into the browser, and we’re excited to announce plans to support this technology and continue to give our customers access to the cutting-edge technologies that will drive the growth of Internet TV.”

Microsoft has kept the download light at just 1MB on the PC (more on the Mac). Silverlight can be installed on XP with support for Windows 2000 on the horizon.

1.    Silverlight uses Windows Media Video (WMV), Microsoft’s implementation of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) VC-1 video standard, enabling compatibility with content already available on the Web, and supporting full-screen high-definition (HD) and mobile video.

2.    Based on the Microsoft .NET Framework, Silverlight enables developers and designers to easily use existing skills and tools to deliver media experiences and RIAs for the Web with role-specific tools: for designers, Microsoft Expression Studio, and for developers, Visual Studio.

3.    Microsoft Expression Media Encoder, which will be a feature of Microsoft Expression Media, enables rapid import, compression and Web publishing of digital video imported from a variety of popular formats, including AVI and QuickTime, into WMV.

4.    Silverlight supports full-screen 720p video and offers seamless transitions between full-screen and windowed mode without losing your position in the video.

5.    XAML can be embedded directly within HTML files. XAML elements are accessible from the client-side JavaScript that used to interact with DHTML without artificial boundaries. Developers can overlay HTML elements on top of Silverlight content, or add content for use with ASP.NET AJAX.