Thanks for taking the time to explain Netflix's justification for choosing Silverlight. As a customer, I would still prefer a solution that doesn't require installing a plugin.
Let me rephrase my original question: is there any chance we'll see a native or browser-based application for the Mac that doesn't require Flash or Silverlight, ala the iPad app? Presumably whatever sort of DRM the iPad app is using could be implemented on the Mac, as well.
By the way, you could have skipped the patronizing bits in your response about HTML5 tags and the definition of the word "codec." The term "HTML5 video" is used colloquially to refer to native browser support for H.264 or WebM video. I thought that was clear enough, but perhaps I should have been more precise.
Ahh, that's an informative link. Thanks for posting that.
You didn't really answer my question about a native Mac app, but that may be because you can't talk about anything that may or may not be in development, which is understandable. In any case, just to re-iterate, my customer feedback is that I'd be much happier with Netflix streaming on my Mac if there were a native Mac app that incorporated the iPad implementation of PlayReady, without the need for installing Silverlight. On the bright side, I'm definitely happier with Mac streaming since learning from elq that Netflix supports "HD" streams on the Mac since May. I guess I should have subscribed to the official Netflix blog, as I'd have heard about it before yesterday.
p.s. Also in that article is this gem:
In addition, Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings sits on the Microsoft board.
I guess we've hashed this to death already, and you've made good points about the technical merits of Silverlight (version 3, at least, which was not available to the public when Mac streaming was originally released), but given the relationship between Netflix's CEO and Microsoft, you can probably understand why people would be skeptical that the choice to use Silverlight was an engineering-driven decision, which was staunch's point in his original post, I think.
At any rate, I think you and elq have made a good argument that as of v3, it's probably a better technical solution than Flash, at least.
Let me rephrase my original question: is there any chance we'll see a native or browser-based application for the Mac that doesn't require Flash or Silverlight, ala the iPad app? Presumably whatever sort of DRM the iPad app is using could be implemented on the Mac, as well.
By the way, you could have skipped the patronizing bits in your response about HTML5 tags and the definition of the word "codec." The term "HTML5 video" is used colloquially to refer to native browser support for H.264 or WebM video. I thought that was clear enough, but perhaps I should have been more precise.