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Netflix Extends "Watch Instantly" To Mac Users
CNet is reporting that Netflix has opened up its "Watch Instantly" feature to Mac users (here is Netflix's blog entry). They accomplished this by using Microsoft's Silverlight technology on both platforms, abandoning the Windows Media Player solution that had been employed in the first, Windows-only, version. Silverlight's DRM capabilities meet Netflix's needs, apparently. Netflix warns that this is beta software. Mac users can opt in here, then watch instantly with Safari or Firefox 2+, with the Silverlight plugin in place. Movie selection is somewhat limited.
I am really afraid of DRM giving Silverlight power and more distribution (and vice versa). While Flash has (or will have?) DRM capabilities too, another "competitor" on the DRM market could really make things even worse than they are.
This also theoretically opens the door to watching movies in Windows WITHOUT having to use IE. I never understood why IE was required to begin with since the current non-beta DRM was Windows Media-based.
It doesn't seem to differ from the normal instant watch selection. Obviously that selection is limited in that it does not encompass the entire Netflix library- that would be infeasible regardless of the player being used.
As far as I can tell, the beta allows access to the full instant watch selection that IE users would see. The player loads and buffers much quicker than the player in IE7- allowing for much faster skipping forwards and backwards on the old P-IV in my living room. The performance difference is fairly pronounced on my relatively new laptop. Under Firefox it is consistently 15 seconds from clicking "play" while browsing instant-watch to the actual start of the video. In IE7 it will take between 30 seconds 45 seconds. Video quality is indistinguishable in terms of clarity, but I noticed much less stuttering in the silverlight player.
On the old pentium IV machine in my livingroom, the time to play drops from about 1 minute to 25 seconds. While this is half the time, it was never a big deal when compared to the convenience. What is a big deal is the impressive drop in stuttering compared to the player in IE7. On my dinosaur of a living room computer, the video for all netflix movies would stutter every few seconds or so until the movie was fully buffered. In the silverlight player, there is no noticeable stuttering.
I did this totally subjective, non-scientific, arbitrary, and slightly drunk comparison on the following two machines:
Older-than-dirt desktop-
-2.4 GHz Pentium IV
-1GB DDR 333 RAM
-Windows XP Home SP3
-Ati Radeon 9800 Pro (256MB VRAM)
Slightly Newer Laptop-
-2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo
-2GB DDR2 RAM
-Windows XP Pro SP3
-Ati Radeon Mobility x1400 (god awful)
say what you want but if you've used silver light it's actually a pretty impressive platform. my only beef is it's download size vs flash. flash is what, 800kb? silver light is 8megs. not really a huge deal i guess but a bit of a wtf considering they do the same thing.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
This was somewhere (digg?) a couple days ago and it was in limited release to new users only. I still can't use it:
Our apologies -- instant watching is currently not supported for Macintosh.
We are working on a solution for Mac users and expect to have it available by the end of 2008.
And they only pretty much did it because they found out it works easily with Silverlight in Intel based macs only.
Amazing that a company is switching _to_ Silverlight for a cross-platform solution. This is wrong on so many levels.
http://dotancohen.com/heb/wallashops.html
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Which will happen.
No sig today...
Hah, specialised -- that's right, the platform that can run all Mac software, pretty much all linux/unix software, and all windows software (virtualised, but hey, it's running it). That's specialized! Wait, no, it's not at all.
Sadly, I titled the first post really poorly. After playing around with the "beta" player on a couple machines for a little while longer I found a few other things worth noting.
The Silverlight player does not require nearly as much free space as the IE7/WMP player for the "high quality" video to play. I've checked and the library is the same as that availible for the PC as far as the 182 items in my instant queue go.
While that doesn't cover the thousands upon thousands of items they stream, it does cover a wide range of properties. So far as I can tell, the Starz! content, the CBS current series content, the NBC current series content, and all the showtime content is still there. Other than that, well who cares if "Santa Clause Conquers the Martians" isn't availible in Firefox. Oh wait, it looks like it is.
Odd, I've been a Netflix user for about 2 years and my roommate has it running on his Mac right now. I'd call their customer service and ask. Did you follow the link in the CNet article? Do you have silverlight installed?
I'm a huge fan of Netflix's DVD rental. I'm on the 8-at-a-time plan and with the exception of the attempt to drop profiles, they've never given me anything other than fantastic service. When it comes to this watch instantly stuff they completely fail, though.
1. Selection is horrid. Even where they have quality content, it's something like season 2 of some TV series, with season 1 nowhere to be found. If they are going to use DRM, I expect some quality content. Otherwise, I'm fine with It's a Wonderful Life. No need for Titillating Monster/Sci-Fi Movie Du Jour, thanks.
2. They've gone from Windows only to Silverlight only. That's great for my media box, which runs Myth. Linux may be a minority on the desktop, but is it really so among media boxes?
3. I have a huge amount of bandwidth, am just a few hops away, and they stream me a postage stamp.
Mac people, give it up already and either have a single purpose media editing Linux system for a hell of a lot less or just get a damn PC and stop making people occasionally write software for you.
So can you please tell me where I can buy Linux versions of Final Cut Studio, Shake 4, Creative Suite CS, Flix Pro, Sound Studio, Toast, and Sony's XDCAM HD transfer apps please?
Also, which distro will work seamlessly with this Linux version of FCS combined with a Decklink card and breakout box?
To get back to "online apps" pretty much all of them work on my Mac. Only the ones who go out of their way to exclude Macs don't work, and those are getting fewer and fewer as time goes on.
Also, does that 99% of software include viruses, keyloggers and other malware? They are technically software and they only run on Windows, so if it does, then I could see the 99% figure being accurate.
Another annoying, proprietary bullshit extension I'm going to need to watch video in my browser that people are going to end up building entire websites in.
I don't think it is NetFlix's choice to adopt Silverlight. They released a press release to their Mac users before, stating that it is the movie companies (probably MPAA) stipulated which DRM they can use. But, true to their word, they finally are opening Watch Instantly to Mac users. Lets hope that the Linux port of Silverlight gets thrown in the mix too.
I know Microsoft products are unpopular, but sadly, the adage "No one ever got fired for buying (trusting) Microsoft" probably applies here.
As if I wasn't ADD already. Now they just h
Shake has always been available for Linux - in fact, it has been ported to MacOS/Windows from that OS. Shake 4 for Linux is sold for $4999 right now.
Besides, have you heard about Autodesk Smoke? That's a complete Linux-based online video editing suite.
Coding etudes
I know Microsoft products are unpopular, but sadly, the adage "No one ever got fired for buying (trusting) Microsoft" probably applies here.
I counter with no one has ever been prosecuted for using Linux.
Enough with the IBM || Microsoft half-truths.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Well, you would probably be interested to learn that for example imeem is written in C# to be able to run it on both Windows and Linux. Silverlight in my, albeit biased, opinion, is much cleaner and neater than flash. Or WM solution for this case, obviously... MS has too much stigma for what it USED TO do, or what it still does but to significantly lesser extent
I don't see how the imeem reference is relevant. What am I missing?
While I won't go into the pros and cons of Flash, in comparison Silverlight currently runs on less platforms, has lower market market share on the platforms that it does run on, and has no superior DRM model. You can add to that your personal feelings about Microsoft and Adobe.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I guess we all know it: https://thepiratebay.org/ And it doesn't require any Silverlight.
It might be because silverlight is already compaitble with all their drm wmv files, not to mention to most companies, Apple and Windows are the most important two platforms.
When you come home from the pub at night after a few beers you don't want to wait for BitTorrent, you want it NOW!
If they can get it working on Xbox instead of PCs they could even have a hit on their hands.
arrghh
Yes, that's a great solution to an incompatible horse-and-buggy problem. Let's switch to a donkey-and-buggy!
It might be because silverlight is already compaitble with all their drm wmv files, not to mention to most companies, Apple and Windows are the most important two platforms.
Obviously those are considerations. Too bad these short-terms goals won out against the longer term goal of true platform independence, rather than "currently works on the platforms we currently want to support".
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Does Shake for Linux get delivered by a naked Natalie Portman or come in a solid gold box or something? The OSX version is $499, and a look around the Apple site doesn't mention why the Linux version is for some reason worth an extra $4,500.
Aye, it was originally a Linux app in fact, before Apple got hold of it - since the release of Shake 4 though, Apple have been "discouraging" the use of Shake on Linux though, with a huge price cut on the OS X version, and unlimited render licences.
Both versions, up to Shake 3.0 were $4,999, and originally Shake was a Linux app (hence the very different interface of the OS X version compared to even the esoteric Final Cut Studio apps).
With the release of Shake 4 though, Apple cut the cost of the OS X version to $499, and provided unlimited render licences for that version, while keeping the cost and licence restrictions on the Linux version to "encourage" people to use the OS X version.
They know they can't kill the Linux version off entirely, due to the number of hih end effects houses who are quite happy to have a mixed Linux/Mac environment and don;t want to change out their Shake boxes for Mac Pros, but they want anyone who wants to start up in the field to go all-Mac.
It all may be academic though, since there are whispers of a from-the-ground-up app to replace Shake at some point from inside Apple, to either go alongside Motion, or to replace that too.
Or just get an Xbox 360 and stream the movies from Netflix come November 19th. That way they have a gaming machine and a netflix machine rolled into one.
Can I bum a sig?
Except that Xbox 360s will only stream Netflix if you have a pay-per-month Xbox Live account.
On top of your Netflix subscription.
They sell standalone Netflix streaming boxes for about $100. With no extra monthly fee.
Xbox live subscription is $50 for 13months. I guess that standalone box will pay for itself in 2 years, but it can't play Gears of War 2.
Can I bum a sig?
I thought this exactly too, its like "hi, we're not going to lock you into windows media player anymore, but we're still going to lock you completely into proprietary windows. whoops!"
Well, considering its officially stated not to be supported on Power PC, what do you expect exactly? What are you going to try next? Install Mac software on a Windows machine?
The parent poster stated clearly that he or she was installing on an Intel-based mac. I didn't even have to RTFA to catch that part.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
That's because Linux users commit more serious crimes.
Frosty piss posts are worthless, GNAA posts are worthless and hurtful, but they are the least of this site's neuroses.
It crashes all the time in Safari for me too. Works great in Firefox.
You know who ELSE never used Microsoft products? That's right...
So can you please tell me where I can buy Linux versions of Final Cut Studio, Shake 4, Creative Suite CS, Flix Pro, Sound Studio, Toast, and Sony's XDCAM HD transfer apps please?
I cannot believe that you got modded troll for that. It is true, there are not enough commercial apps available for Linux at the moment. What I wouldn't do for Solidworks on my Ubuntu box!
For Creative Suite, write to these folks:
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/contact.html
For Flix, write here:
http://www.on2.com/index.php?373
Write to these folks asking about Sound Studio for Linux:
http://www.freeverse.com/support/
This is the address for the people responsible for Toast:
http://www.roxio.com/enu/company/contact.html
And the infamous Sony:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/corporate/contacts.asp
Please, don't be shy and WRITE TO THEM! If we don't write and let them know that Linux is a viable OS with a strong user base, then they will never port their software to Linux.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
They know they can't kill the Linux version off entirely, due to the number of hih end effects houses who are quite happy to have a mixed Linux/Mac environment and don;t want to change out their Shake boxes for Mac Pros, but they want anyone who wants to start up in the field to go all-Mac.
What, like they couldn't kill off the Windows version of Logic?
I doubt it.
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
I did it at Morro Rock. It was the middle of the night, and my girlfriend kept getting scared every time a car turned around in the parking lot, because their headlights would shine on us for a split second. Good times.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
I've watched instantly on both PC, the "original" MSIE version, and Mac with Silverlight. On the PC, it's very watchable, especially in full-screen, and this is on a 2GHz P4. On Silverlight on the Mac it's like watching YouTube: massive pixellation on fast cuts and pans, and pretty fuzzy borders otherwise. And this is on a 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo MBP. Unless this is a result of it being beta or a Silverlight fault, I'd have to say that on a Mac it pretty well, to use a scientific term, sucks.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
I've been watching Netflix on my Intel (mac) for months now. I just run VirtualBox with windows installed. Works great. Works with Linux too. Of course you have a valid Windows XP or vista Lic but given were talking about a payment service here, the small cost of obtaining any old windows lic if you don't already have one is not really an issue.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Or, you can get the PlayOn server for Windows (1x $30 fee) which can stream Netflix, Hulu & YouTube to your 360, PS3 and any other DLNA compliant device (such as XBMC). I'm using the free beta and it works really well!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Unless the user in question has no desire to play games. Initial Xbox 360 investment at $200 plus $50 per year is gonna come right out of the gate more expensive than a $100 purpose built set top box, and will only grow more expensive over time.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Anyone tried it on Moonlight? I've tried a few other Silverlight applications on Moonlight with varying degrees of success. I might consider restarting my Netflix subscription if Moonlight could play the "Watch Instantly" features.
This is obviously quite the coup for Microsoft and the Silverlight platform, which has up to now been a "nobody cares" platform. The main effect of their previous big user, NBC for the Olympics, was to drive people to BitTorrent.
I fully understand that NetFlix wouldn't be allowed to make Hollywood movies available without some sort of DRM. But do they remember they're competing not with DVDs by mail or DVD rental, but with unlocked BitTorrent downloads?
How usable is NetFlix via Silverlight? Does the DRM have little enough pain-in-the-butt factor to compete with free?
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I couldn't get Silverlight to install in Firefox for some reason so I tried Opera. If you tell it to identify as Firefox then you can use watch instantly with Opera.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
The DRM on the Windows Media Player plugin for Netflix doesn't work because my monitor is too big. I shit you not. It took a lot off googling to figure out the problem, but the player won't play when I have my 24" widescreen hooked up, but will with my 19".
Does the silverlight plugin have this same restriction? Either way it'll be nice that I can play these on my Macbook Pro now.
Thats what I get for replying to a post when I just woke up... I had reread it like 5 times originally, and saw "power pc" everytime in the grandparent's post.
All I can say right now is... whoops.
Ignore my other post, since it seems like I can't read in the morning. That said, do you have Adblock installed?
Every time I see a mention of Silverlight, it's followed shortly thereafter by a stream of comments of the form "Silverlight sux0rz". However, none of the ones I've skimmed have given any particular reasons.
I'm curious as to specific reasons why I should avoid installing the Silverlight plug-in on my Mac. I'm already aware of (and sympathetic to) the "DRM is fundamentally evil" argument; I'm looking for other reasons beyond that (and its companion "Microsoft is evil").
When they support linux , Then I'll rejoice
Hard to get excited when I still can't watch it on my mac (PowerPC) just as it was with the Olympics.
Hitler?
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
I think it's high time Slashdot added the ability to do "score:-1, goatse".
I think its a great match
You speak London? I speak London very best.
You can't opt back out of the beta once you opt in, so caveat emptor. I learned this the hard way after I found out that the Silverlight player doesn't seem to utilize the full-screen video overlay when playing over s-video from my laptop.
All the Silverlight griping aside, I am already watching Dr. Who season 1 on my macbook, and it makes me quite happy. :D
-G
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
It's nice to have the option for more content on my Mac Mini HTPC. I primarily use it for Broadcast HDTV via MythTV and DVDs from Netflix. So, this give a whole new source of content.
I have been using it for a few days, with mixed results.
- The quality is not great, and can vary widely. It seems to adapt to your internet connection speed. So, I think my Comcast "Burst then throttle" service screws it up. I often get the message saying needs to re-buffer.
- It's completely browser based. So, no integration with MythTV or FrontRow. No remote control, etc. I hope even the browser based version can be improved (e.g. flexible bookmarking).
I watched a documentary on it, Street Fight, and while the quality was not great (viewing on a 720p projector) for a documentary this was not a big problem. I also watched Tin Cup, and found it to be acceptable. But, I tried a couple movies with more action, and found the compression breaks down under a lot of movement.
Hard to get excited when I still can't watch it on my mac (PowerPC) just as it was with the Olympics.
Don't get exited, then. Instead, write to Netflix and let them know that you, and the millions of other Ubuntu, PowerPC, Fedora, and other non-Windows || Intel Mac _still_ cannot use their service. Let them know that they need a cross-platform solution, not a pick-and-choose platform solution. Here is their address:
http://www.netflix.com/ContactUs
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
And it was to get away from Microsoft.
Except that Xbox 360s will only stream Netflix if you have a pay-per-month Xbox Live account.
On top of your Netflix subscription.
They sell standalone Netflix streaming boxes for about $100. With no extra monthly fee.
Damnit, I hate Xbox Live. It feels like you are paying for Steam. So no chance for Netflix on my Xbox if I'm already a Netflix subscriber but not an Xbox Live subscriber?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Heh, don't hold your breath on the Sony one - even the Mac version of the software for pulling XDCAM HD clips down off a PD Deck is a bit ropey. It got a lot better with the latest release, but it took them long enough - and that was when they were working hard to increase XDCAM uptake in the industry as a cost effective migration path for HD (alongside HDCAM). you'd think they'd want to make it as attractive as possible for FCS users on the Mac to use the new format.
While the app did work, it was very kludgy, and didn't support some of the much-vaunted metadata features of the format, and you couldn't even name the clips on the disc prior to moving them to your drive! You can now, with the new version, but it took them a while to come out with it.
I have been trying the Mac/Silverlight version, and found the quality to be a bit lacking.
I had been considering buying one of the LG Blueray DVD players, in large part because it supports Netflix streaming.
Has anyone compared both viewing methods? Can I expect better quality via the hardware decoder (LG player or Netflix's Roku box)?
while it is an interesting article, I fail to see how your post is relevant to my post and TFA... am I missing something?
Don't worry, I'm not holding my breath. I'm just not buying Sony until it works. I vote with my pocketbook.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Yea - I did. I also asked that they support closed captions and/or subtitles on their view instantly streams and have encouraged others to do the same.
Can I get it in Canada yet? Or is the border stopping the internets from coming over here still?
But, true to their word, they finally are opening Watch Instantly to Mac users.
Correction: They're finally opening it up to some Mac users. This solution is for intel Macs only. That's fine if you're assuming people want to use it to see the occasional flick on their laptop, but a fail for those users who have an older Mac as a media center, since a lot of those are old PPC systems.
I have two thoughts about this. First, Netflix should have gone with Flash video which is already in use by sites like Hulu so any DRM issues are bunk. Second, Netflix's selection of movies for live viewing is so poor, anything else they do is pretty much pointless. Right now only 14% of the movies in my queue are available for instant viewing and most of those are really bad old movies just there for bad movie and beer nights.
This is wrong on so many levels.
What's really wrong is the level of content available. This service has less movies than TNT on the weekend.
I tried this a few months ago and was very disappointed.
So now you can watch 100 old movies on a MAC....
So, how long until we can get this going on linux? I'm tired of using a virtual machine to watch my movies.
:(){
But Hitler did use IBM products.
And yet, for the many, many people that already have a 360 (paying for the monthly fee already), and have netflix, it's like a little bonus. We don't have to pay $100 for a Netflix streaming box. By the way, the 360 does a lot more than streaming. Also, streaming to the 360 is likely to get Netflix quite a few new subscribers.
I, too, was less than impressed with the online offerings a few short months ago. However, they're really ramping up the content these days. I assume it's to feed those "watch instantly" TV-boxes they're pushing now. You can't sell a movie device without current content. That said, there are new shows and movies popping up every day in the watch instantly section, many from 2007 and 2008. One of my gripes is that they have many later seasons of current shows, but don't have earlier seasons. I was eager to check out Numbers, but they don't have the first season few seasons. WTF?!?
At any rate, I wish there was a way to rip the DRM out of those movies. I already download the movies on my FreeBSD box -- my connection is too slow to watch the high-quality movies on-demand, so I batch-download movies/shows overnight and watch the next day. I wish I didn't need to copy them over the the family Windows PC in order to watch them. Even then, I hate not being able to watch them if the internet connection flakes out and I can't contact the DRM/license servers (happens -- crappy rural DSL). It's not like I'd pirate the damned movies -- if I wanted to do that, I'd queue up the physical DVD and rip them, menus and all (which I do anyways to speed up getting DVDs back into the mail). The DRM, as usual, inhibits convenient playback by a paying customer. Lame.
Method of processing duck feet
Competes with existing Apple product.
Great! It is feedback like that that makes projects improve.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
The "no one was ever fired for buying IBM" line as applied to Microsoft is dangerous. I was pointing that out. Not that I'm not an anti-MS sheep or anything (typing on a Microsoft keyboard, though under Ubuntu) however a blanket statement that MS is somehow a safe harbor is far from the truth.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I use Mediamall's PlayOn media software.
http://www.themediamall.com/playon
It sits on my Windows XP box and serves Netflix and Hulu to my Xbox 360, my PS3, and my PopcornHour box in the bedroom. It costs $30, and works like a god damn champ.
Not that I work for Netflix, but in my instant queue, also at around 15% of total, there are actually some recent releases like We Own the Night. Since they inked a deal with Starz maybe more recent content will become available from other sources. Not that using Silverlight is a good way to go about it at all though.
No, but if you also happen to have a Windows Media center PC or can "find" one, you can follow this guide http://lifehacker.com/396881/turn-your-xbox-360-into-a-streaming-netflix-player , pretty much the only other way I've heard of, besides boxee, for streaming.
If one were to be anti-MS, would that make them a sheep, or are anti-MS sheep a subset of anti-MS?
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
I already canceled my NetFlix account. I just wasn't seeing the value-add of waiting for the disc to arrive in the mail, when I can get most movies I already want to watch immediately somewhere else (iTunes, drive to Movie Gallery, Amazon Unbox on my TiVo).
I use Mac at home (I work on a Windows box all day at work, why would I put that in my house?) and I got tired of waiting for Netflix to get out from under Microsoft. Now it's clear they never will.
On the other hand, I can't figure out why anyone would by a AppleTV either. TiVo works for my family just fine.
Anyway. How many hours can/should a person spend sitting in front of a monitor (answer: all waking)?
A gig of RAM? My G4 ibook is out.
It seemed to work on my 24" iMac last night. Quality wasn't particularly good, but it did work, and seemed to have no issues running fullscreen.
Anti-MS sheep are a subset of anti-MS people in general. There are those who think (RMS, Mark Shuttleworth) and sheep (Ubuntu mailing list subscribers).
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Movie selection is somewhat limited.
I don't understand, Mac users have a smaller selection of Watch Instantly movies than Windows users do?
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
OK, many thanks. I've been following your train of thought in this thread and wanted that clarification.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Thanks for the info.
I clicked around for a while there. I found a phone number, but nothing that lets you write to them...
Maybe public relations? At the very least they could tell you who to contact. Update us with what they say.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
They did kill the Windows version of Shake. They did not kill the Linux version for a few reasons:
1. Heavily used in render farms so it would kill their market if they did not support it (though that does not explain why they kept the GUI working).
2. They see Linux not as a competitor but more as an ally in fighting Windows on the desktop.
3. Worry about negative publicity.
This is not for all mac users. You must have an Intel macintosh for for it to work. I have literally the last iMac made with the PowerPC chip, and it is still going strong. I have no plans to replace it, but I do now have plans to drop Netflix. Why pay for a service I can't use completely and that they're not willing to support?
I might look again, thanks.
DRM, it's for the consumer's own good.
Microsoft has over a decade's track record of giving short shift to security in favor of performance. Like Java, they are using components implemented in the interpreted code to implement the security model, rather than implement a guaranteed closed interpreter that has no mechanisms to do dangerous actions. The main difference is that Sun had a decent security track record - where they had security problems, they closed them completely - and took the course of sticking to compatibility and security over trying to stay on the bleeding edge in performance (and Microsoft took advantage of that to push their horridly risky ActiveX technology).
I don't trust ANYTHING Microsoft does to be secure. They are still pushing "security theatre" solutions like UAC and the leaky sandbox around IE instead of breaking with inherently insecure APIs.
People have claimed that they're going to be different this time. I've been hearing that for a decade, and it's never happened before. What's different this time?
Notes?
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
What are you looking for in terms of API or codec info?
Silverlight will be adopting H.264 in its next major version: http://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/H264-and-AAC-support-coming-in-Silverlight/
The VC-1 codec is already a SMPTE spec: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VC-1
The Silverlight Xaml vocabulary spec for Silverlight 2 was published in September: http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/A/6/0A6F7755-9AF5-448B-907D-13985ACCF53E/%5BMS-SLXV%5D.pdf
My video compression blog
Punch card computing. They fed data about prisoners into the computers to see who went to jail, who went to work camps and who went to death camps. IBM calculated the Holocaust.