Watching videos online has become a common occurrence among many internet users. According to a CNN article, about 7.7 million people watched the inauguration of President Barack Obama online, potentially making it the single most-watched event in the history of live web video.

That said, providing the technology to stream video online is becoming competitive. Both the Presidential Inauguration Committee and 2009 NCAA March Madness have gone with the relatively new Microsoft Silverlight.

Silverlight is a web browser plug-in that streams video and audio. The viewing scale ranges from mobile devices and desktop browsers to high definition video modes. It also allows users to create graphics and animation, among other features. Silverlight’s main competitor currently is Adobe Flash, which has been around for several years and has a strong following in the market.

As with any type of technology there are some limitations. For development purposes, both Silverlight and Flash have to be created on Windows. However, Silverlight 2.0 has to be played on Windows or a Mac operating system, so people using Linux will not be able to play it on their machines. Flash can be played on any operating system, excluding some mobile devices. Also, since Silverlight is using the Windows video format, avi and .mov files can’t be viewed. A large majority of files on websites such as YouTube have these alternate types of video files.

On the plus side, the debugging process is simpler with Silverlight than with Flash. And since a variety of development languages can be used for Silverlight, such as JavaScript and .Net it is easier to maintain for a programmer. Flash, however, can only be programmed in Action Script. Also, Silverlight has XAML based presentation layer for Search Engine Optimization, which has the potential to bring greater traffic to a website. Search Engines can read XML and XAML better than they can Flash.

The development and programming team at Media Genesis is always looking for better technical solutions and are currently researching the pros and cons of using Microsoft Silverlight.
For more information contact inquiry@mediaG.com