
“You’re one simple step from…” Don’t sweat it Silverlight, I was just leaving - g0atbutt
http://codesketch.com/2010/02/20/“you’re-one-simple-step-from-”-don’t-sweat-it-silverlight-i-was-just-leaving/
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briansmith
You are not NBC's customer; Microsoft is. I am sure that Microsoft paid a lot
of money for this, and it was money well spent.

This is a trend that's only going to continue. I wouldn't be surprised to see
Microsoft sponsor another major video website like Hulu to get Silverlight
installed on more computers. I think in a few years Adobe may have to resort
to paying to get the Flash plugin installed.

~~~
dschobel
It's funny though, poking around the olympics' site you can see they use flash
extensively as well for some of the interactive features.

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nickpp
What's the problem really? I just installed Silverlight instead on whining
about it.

~~~
g0atbutt
Because I actually care about what stuff companies try to install on my
computer.

~~~
nickpp
And you have FLASH installed?

But seriously, me too. And I know EXACTLY what Silverlight is and I am OK to
have it installed on my computer. Lightweight, fast, not very useful but... in
this case it has an use: me watching the damn Olympic vids.

~~~
gvb
Yes, I have flash installed, but _very_ grudgingly and only because I _also_
have flashblock installed on firefox and chrome. It pisses me off every time I
need to unblock it and it _really_ pisses me off after I unblock it and find
it was an unnecessary waste of time to watch the "flashy" animation that added
no value to the web page.

(/me gets off soapbox, wipes the spittle off face)

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ricardo
I saw the same message when attempting to view a video on NBC's Olympics site.
After grudgingly installing Silverlight I was still unable to watch anything.
The videos require Silverlight 2 or 3, neither of which is supported on a
PowerPC mac.

~~~
g0atbutt
I don't understand why they are trying to push 2 proprietary formats on us.
You think they would at least try to stick with just one if they weren't going
to go with HTML5.

~~~
dschobel
Well the motivations for MS and Adobe are obvious.

MS definitely (not sure about Adobe) chooses high profile video intensive
sites to "partner with" to show-case their platform.

In short, it's business.

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philwelch
Silverlight _does_ perform significantly better than Flash.

~~~
peterb
Not with Chrome on OSX. Browser hangs & dies.

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InclinedPlane
If you have flash and you refuse to install Silverlight out of some moral
anti-plug-in stance then you are just being silly. At that point you're just
haggling over the price: <http://jo-kes.blogspot.com/2007/06/churchill-
humor.html>

~~~
smokey_the_bear
The page loaded, and I started reading the story, and then the whole screen
was covered by a popup that said "Something went wrong loading the page,
reload or go to a different page". No way to close it to finish reading. Might
have even been flash covering it up.

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sradu
I heard a story from a friend that had to choose between Flash and Silverlight
for an on-demand movie project. (DRM was mandatory, so H.264 was out).

Adobe asked for $30.000 for some sort of an Adobe Server. And this included
literally no support. They didn't show one sign that they cared for him as a
client.

Microsoft was incredibly enthusiastic. They enrolled him in the BizSpark
program, gave him all the licenses for free for the first years. At the same
time he was getting daily calls from Redmond and Microsoft engineers to see
how they could to help him.

I'm not saying this is the case here, still, his site is now using SilverLight
too.

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keithwarren
Smooth Streaming...seriously, I have never met a single objective person who
did not recognize the Silverlight HD streaming solution to be superior to
Flash. I will take quality over adoption of an unfinished HTML spec.

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jr2460
So instead of taking one simple step to watch the Olympics in the best quality
possible the author would rather rant about wanting to use a technology that
doesn't exist yet(HTML5) or use a technology that cannot deliver the the
highest quality(Flash). The simple truth is Silverlight has the capability to
deliver the most superior quality video. You can argue all day long about how
you don't like 3rd party proprietary software, but the fact is, NBC went with
Silverlight because it's the best solution that exists today. Sounds like good
business to me.

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wedesoft
Because of you mentioning the snowboarding video I installed Moonlight only to
be confronted with this: "Due to Olympic broadcasting regulations, NBC is only
allowed to show Olympic competition video on the internet to users in the
United States and U.S. Territories (including Puerto Rico). Users outside of
those locations will still have access to an extensive set of non-event video
content on NBCOlympics.com including the video listed below."

Now back to uninstalling Moonlight...

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sker
Another geek complaining about non-standard plug-ins. I really wish HN had
categories so I could filter out repetitive rants.

If the author didn't install Silverlight and watched the video he wanted, that
is pure ideology borderline religion and I can't feel any sympathy for him.

Sorry but I'm not a militant ideologist. I'm all about pragmatism and net
value. If I have to install a non-intrusive plugin in order to watch a video,
so be it.

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jdragz
(If I repeat anything that's already been said, my apologies)

Silverlight is slowly becoming an alternative standard to Flash. Reason being
is that it's more based on code rather than the custom resources Flash uses.
Sure, you have to install something just like the Flash player but overall,
Silverlight loads and runs faster.

I've been catching more and more Silverlight where on heavy video based
content. All of Netflix's instant streaming is done through Silverlight. Sure,
NBC could have just stuck with flash but honestly, their flash runs like crap.

I'm OK with waiting a moment to install a Silverlight player. Flash users
already have to install a new player everytime Flash updates. What's the
difference?

I think either way there would be unsatisfied viewers. NBC took a risk.
Silverlight is probably one of the only things that Microsoft can impress me
with.

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krobertson
"The moral of this story is never make your users jump through hoops to view
your content, try your product, or use your services."

The author completely contradicts himself. He's arguing not to use things that
need to be installed, yet saying they should have used Flash, which is
something you install. Flash is on 98% of computers (his figure) because those
people installed it. At some point, they had to jump through a hoop. I haven't
need to jump through hoops to view Olympics videos because I already installed
Silverlight.

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g0atbutt
The Olympics should be as open as possible. There has to be some sort of
monetary deal between Microsoft and NBC. This really could have been a great
time to push HTML5.

~~~
timthorn
The Olympics is one big commercial venture, and has been for some time:
[http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/markets/article-23807728-why-p...](http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/markets/article-23807728-why-
perrier-will-be-off-limits-in-the-2012-olympics.do)

Not to say that it /shouldn't/ be as open as possible, just that it isn't.

~~~
dschobel
If there's any doubt about the deeply ingrained commercial nature of the
games, there's this hilarious blog post from uvex:

[http://www.uvexsports.com/2010/02/blonde-we-like-wins-
downhi...](http://www.uvexsports.com/2010/02/blonde-we-like-wins-downhill-
last-name.html)

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rm-rf
Adobe's inability to write code that lasts more than a month between exploits
makes me more than happy to use Silverlight for streaming media.

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laddy
Are you sure this is an NBC thing and not an olympic thing in general?

Because here in Canada we get sent to <http://www.ctvolympics.ca> and they're
using Silverlight as well.

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alextingle
The point is that some people really hate Silverlight, and others simply
cannot install it. Why would anyone choose it as the platform for their
business?

