NBC dumped Microsoft Silverlight for NFL game streaming in favor of Adobe Flash. The results after the first game of 2008 this past Thursday night was a disaster. Choppy, unwatchable video was all users got.
I love Adobe, but I think this was a huge mistake. I watched a few Olympic events on NBC.com and was completely taken by surprise at how great Microsoft Silverlight worked out. I had to download the plugin, which took just a few seconds, and install first, but it was no problem at all. The video quality was superb, and I never experienced choppy, unwatchable video. Not once.
Flash, on the other hand, virtually guarantees studdering, grainy, generally poor quality video. At least in streaming content.
I realize that it really comes down to the quality of the encoding work, but I can't help but to think that the technology used in Silverlight is just better.
Encoding quality does not equal delivery
Wed, 09/24/2008 - 12:46 — Cole (not verified)Think again. Silverlight technology is not "better." The Olympics were using VC-1, which is Microsoft's WMV format. This is a major step down in quality from MPEG-4/h.264, which is what Hollywood and the other networks use for HD. Flash and h.264 is far superior to Silverlight/VC-1. This was one reason why Blu-Ray beat HD-DVD. Same technology battle, so that's not it.
The problem with the broadcast was encoding and capacity. If you broadcast in SD (standard definition) instead of HD (VC-1), SD will always look muddy in comparison. The Olympics had NBC serving up one-fifth the streams they expected they would have. No blips there when you have lots of bandwidth, and a bored server. But NBC was not happy about the lack of traffic, and Silverlight was a big problem with a new, scary download. The NFL got a LOT more traffic than they thought they would, and got overwhelmed.
I've seen plenty of silky smooth Flash h.264 with no studdering. Neither Flash nor Silverlight studder because of their technology. They show what they're given, on the computer hardware you have, on the bandwidth you have, and the bandwidth they have. The talk about technology performance here is completely wrong. Let's put the blame where it truly belongs. Swapping in Silverlight with SD and no bandwidth would produce the exact same thing.
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