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Major League Baseball Dumps Silverlight For Flash
christian.einfeldt writes "This week, Major League Baseball will open without Microsoft's Silverlight at the plate, according to Bob Bowman, CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which handles much of the back-end operations for MLB and several other leagues and sporting events. The change was decided on last year but was set to be rolled out this spring. Among the causes of MLB's disillusionment with Silverlight were technical glitches users experienced, including needing administrator privileges to install the plugin (often impossible in workplaces). Baseball's opening day last year was plagued by Silverlight instability, with many users unable to log on and others unable to watch games. Adobe Flash already exists on 99% of user machines, said Bowman, and Adobe is 'committed to the customer experience in video with the Flash Player.' MLBAM's decision to dump Silverlight is particularly problematic for Microsoft's effort to compete with Adobe, due to the fact that MLBAM handles much of the back-end operations for CBS' Webcasts of the NCAA Basketball Tournament and this year will do the encoding for the 2009 Masters golf tournament."
I wish the article would have explained why MLB went with Silverlight in the first place. What kind of arm-twisting (or hooker-and-blow-providing) could MS have possibly done to convince a company to take such a major financial gamble? For the most part, Silverlight is largely unproven tech and--to add insult to injury--proprietary. Can someone explain the appeal?
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
"Major League Baseball Dumps Pact with Demons for Pact with the Devil."
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Nearly all front end developers know javascript, and are therefore quite capable of flash programming. Silverlight has low market penetration and nobody wants to use it because it's widely seen as the latest in a long series of failed attempts to Microsoftize the web.
This is off topic, but Slashdot's MSFT icon is stale.
I agree. I think the new icon should be a flying chair.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
That image is almost NSFW!
... as they say.
As industry devils go, Flash has fairly low levels of evil. It's proven, it fills a niche, it works, and while it's not wide open, it's not exactly locked shut either.
Tweet, tweet.
MLB could benefit from the high resolution available. Has anyone watched the March Madness on Demand from Cbs.sportsline.com? The quality was amazing... much better than any flash video that I have watched. It seems that Flash is way behind in terms of video. Youtube is NOT good quality. Cbs.sportsline.com's video scaled down or up based on the available bandwidth and was an excellent viewing experience. Of course, I am not factoring in the business aspects, but the quality of silverlight's video can be high. further reading http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/61563
Microsoft today announced the release of version 2.0 of its world-beating Silverlight multimedia platform for the Web. As a replacement for Adobe's Flash, it is widely considered utterly superfluous and of no interest to anyone who could be found.
"We have a fabulous selection of content partners for Silverlight," announced Microsoft marketer Scott Guthrie on his blog today. "NBC for the Olympics, which delivered millions of new users to BitTorrent. The Democrat National Committee, which is fine because those Linux users are all Ron Paul weirdos anyway. It comes with rich frameworks, rich controls, rich networking support, a rich base class library, rich media support, oh God kill me now. My options are underwater, my resume's a car crash, Google won't call me back. My life is an exercise in futility. I'm the walking dead, man. The walking dead."
Silverlight was created by Microsoft to leverage its desktop monopoly on Windows, to work off the tremendous sales and popularity of Vista. Flash is present on a pathetic 96% of all computers connected to the Internet, whereas Silverlight downloads are into the triple figures.
"But it's got DRM!" cried Guthrie. "Netflix loved it! And web developers love us too, after all we did for them with IE 6. Wait, come back! We'll put porn on it! Free porn!"
Similar Microsoft initiatives include its XPS replacement for Adobe PDF, its HD Photo replacement for JPEG photographs and its earlier Liquid Motion attempt to replace Flash. Also, that CD-ROM format Vista defaults to which no other computers can read.
In a Microsoft internal security sweep, Guthrie's own desktop was found to still be running Windows XP.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I'm still surprised companies aren't jumping on the HTML 5 bandwagon. Eschew flash and plug-ins for native web browser applications and video. http://280slides.com/ is a great example of what can be done. The ObjectiveJ they're developing is truly amazing - and it's all browser native. Even IE 8 works. I hate to say it, but Apple are right for once - get rid of flash and other plug-in based user interfaces and get back to basics. Share your JavaScript frameworks, use local storage and more - embrace HTML 5.
why are people trying to watch MLB on their work computers in the first place?
Have you ever watched or listened to a baseball game? It's been the chosen background noise of America since the 1930s. It's not like a lot happens that is going to disrupt your work.
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
because I live within 300 miles of the stadium and as such i am in the blackout zone. They figure they can black out all of NY state in both audio and video if your within 300 miles you should go to the game.
I like to stream the audio. Narrow bandwidth even though we have high speed. The audio quality is as good as the radio, and if it is teams that everyone wants to listen to, we use one of the short range FM transmitters to the shop radios.
Radio and tv blackout zones are a true evil. especially in an age when the teams in question make billions.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Since you're being off-topic, I'll make the situation worse and ask a question that has been plaguing me for a while now.
Is referring to companies by their stock symbol some new trend, or do people who frequently do that actually trade stocks a significant amount and have a reason to feel more comfortable with "MSFT" than "Microsoft"?
Is it just shorter?
If you spent all day reading Slashdot, you would know this already: --grin-- Free Flex Builder for Unemployed Developers.
Yes everyone has flash, but what they don't tell you is that you'll also need the Swarmcast NexDef browser plug-in.
Check out the not so great review of the flash/nexdef experience: MLB Support Forums
Oh and if you want to also understand this from Microsoft's perspective: Miscosoft SL Team Blog
The CBS March Madness HQ streaming was SilverLight and was a huge success.
It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well. - Rene Descartes (1637)
"You'd think that ... they [Microsoft] would have spent a little more effort making sure everything worked just right..."
I agree with everything you said.
It's interesting that the failures of technological companies are often social failures, not fundamentally technological failures.
What theories do you have about why Microsoft allowed the failure to happen? Has Microsoft become unable to function? Or, is Microsoft accustomed to its virtual monopoly causing people to accept Microsoft software no matter how buggy? Or, what?
I think this is year 9 or so for me as a paying customer of mlb.com. I will say that Microsoft did a decent job for them a few years back when they switched from Realplayer the Windows Media Player. Maybe the relationship and history of performing had something do to with getting Silverlight in the first place. A few posters have suggested that it was arm twisting / bribes etc. that got Silverlight in the door, but so often it is the same way as anyone buys anything. Microsoft told them they would perform just like they have in the past. They did not. Kudos to mlb.com for not being afraid to go with what gives their users a consistent experience instead of going with the status quo. The new player is fast and stable so far with one day under my belt. I don't really like the way they present the information, but I am used to running the Yahoo gameday for the stats while I listen to the game in mlb.com anyway so I can live with that.
"I understand [my puppy] someday might grow up to bite me."
Bad analogy. This is the correct analogy:
"My puppy has bitten me severely several times and I understand when he is larger the bites may be even worse."
Haven't you heard of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish"? Here are 6,780 links.
Adobe and Apple are in some sort of weird cold war. They stick it to each other in sly ways.
I pray to the gods of streaming video make Netflix follow suit! I refuse to install Silverlight on my machine, in fact I click on the view now button, just to get the 'install player' message in the hopes someone is watching how many abandoned sessions there are!
I am willing to miss out on part of my netflix service because because of their awful choice of player. If Hulu and now the MLB can stream full length movies with flash, so can you! And I watch more movies on Hulu because of that!
I really don't care what technology they use, just make it work.
Today, the audio of the first 2 innings of the Red Sox game were replaced with a high pitching whining noise. Opening day and all I could do is turn off the sound.
M
A chimp on a flying chair.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
And 0 and 2 to Ballmer.
MLB is up one zip on that last homerun by Adobe Flash.
"Bud" Selig goes into his windup...and Ballmer gives it tremendous jolt!
It's going, going, and it's gone!
Right off the 'Microsoft will give MLB all the assistance it needs in the way of servers, tech support, and donated Windows Server 2008 licenses in every MLB stadium across the country if you'll install Silverlight' sign in center field!
The crowd is going wild!
They're pouring onto the field!
They've got Selig down and there cramming Ubuntu Server DVDs down his throat!
And wait...they're after Ballmer now hurling chairs...but he seems to be holding them off with free copies of...Yes! Windows XP!
I've never seen anything like this in all my years in Baseball.
This is truly a sad, sad, day.
This is Bob Uecker signing off.
Next, 'Silverlight' returns to MLB after the All Star break 2009. Right after these messages.
Sig this!
Flash, savior of the Universe.
Flash, It will save everyone of us
Flash It's a miracle
Flash, King of the impossible
I mean, duh.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They were counting on the massive market share of Vista to put it over.
Oops.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It's too bad that MLB charges money for this service. Considering the number of ads that naturally fit into a baseball game broadcast, it should still be profitable to broadcast it for free. This works well for TV stations which broadcast baseball games, and it's also been very successful for the web broadcasts of the NCAA basketball tournament in recent years.
Of course, it's not free because the MLB won't pass up this (or any) chance to make money. Never mind the fact that the game broadcasts themselves are also ads, since the fans often buy merchandise and tickets.
I would love to see the day come when virtually any sporting event is broadcast online for free. The economics seem to add up. Because of the importance of a live broadcast, and the frequency of breaks in the action, ads actually make sense as a way to pay for sports broadcasts. I don't often tolerate ads for any other sort of video.
Because you can watch any game you want, which is especially good if you're a fan of a team you don't live nearby. The games on tv at any given place are only a fraction of the available games. Most places have most of the games for the nearest team on a channel, then a few various games throughout the week. If you live far away from your team, you're likely to never see them, especially if they're not the evil empire. Also with mlb.tv premium you can watch several games at once, have dvr functionality, watch the game with any announcers, including radio announcers, etc etc. It's a service for serious baseball fans, but one that is wanted.
nobody's perfect
You mean that "open source" Moonlight that you are leaving full of Microsoft patent timebombs -- Microsoft patent infected code that is being incorporated into Moonlight under the guise of being open because of the Novell Microsoft agreement? The "open source" moonlight that is only safe on Novell's (MS) linux?
Take a walk back to Redmond with that "our open source moonlight" bullshit.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.