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[Merged] Silverlight and the iPad

doug in albq

doug in albq

Suspended
Original poster
Oct 12, 2007
1,449
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I am not surprised, just stating a fact.

I did do a search, and found absolutely no thread topics about the iPad+Silverlight, so i made this thread.

between no flash support and no silverlight support, a large chunk of the CURRENT internet is going to show up as blue lego blocks for iPad users.
 
doug in albq said:
I am not surprised, just stating a fact.

I did do a search, and found absolutely no thread topics about the iPad+Silverlight, so i made this thread.

between no flash support and no silverlight support, a large chunk of the CURRENT internet is going to show up as blue lego blocks for iPad users.
Click to expand...

Ohhh Nooo. Now 0.00001% won't work.

Seriously I don't have Silverlight and haven't noticed a web page that won't work.
 
bossxii said:
I know Netflix streams via Silverlight.

What other sites use it? (honestly do not know, haven't researched it)
Click to expand...

Are you sure netflix uses silverlight? I stream netflix on my mac all the time and never had to install it.
 
ARF900 said:
Are you sure netflix uses silverlight? I stream netflix on my mac all the time and never had to install it.
Click to expand...

I quickly googled it and found several sites that say it does use Silverlight. I do not know if their is another means to stream though.

Wiki has this to say (yes I know anyone can post on Wiki but I'm pretty sure this to be the case with Netflix.)

Web Browsers Supported by Platform:
Windows. Windows XP Service Pack 2, Vista running Internet Explorer 6 (or higher) or Firefox 2 (or higher).[16] New viewer requires use of the Microsoft Silverlight technology and a 1.2 GHz CPU.
Mac OS X. An Intel-based Mac with OS 10.4.8 or later. Browser support is Safari 3 (or higher) or Firefox 2 (or higher).[16] Mac Netflix was added October 27, 2008, which requires use of the Microsoft Silverlight technology.[17]
 
Well there is also Shockwave and Unity3D but who's counting. Shockwave used to have a pretty good history with Macs and even back in the days of the G3 performed fairly well. Sadly Flash kind of killed it which sucks because it was a much more efficient powerful programming language. Lingo may have looked funky but it was fast. Today a lot of people play games on Shockwave.com. All the 3D games are still made with Shockwave but a lot of the 2D games are made with Flash now. The thing is that many of the games could be ported over to native Iphone apps once Flash CS5 comes out.

Unity3D is native 3D app performance in a web plugin. It is pretty hardcore and supports hardware rendering. It's problem is that is just isn't very well know and very few people actually use it for web based 3D content. Unity3D is mostly used to create desktop games and believe it or not Iphone apps. Unity3D would perform very well on a Ipad but I doubt Apple will ever allow them to have an app or work through the browser. Although technically it doesn't really need it since Unity3D can compile native Iphone apps.

http://unity3d.com/

As for Silverlight it has one major use for us right now. Kick butt live video streaming. Silverlight has smooth streaming that will adapt the quality of the video stream based on the users bandwidth and cpu speed. It also can use multicast video streaming which means a large campus only has to pull a video stream once and then it gets broadcast to everybody on the internal network. This is the only way we can stream to financial companies who have horrid bandwidth for thousands of employs. As much as I look forward to using HTML 5 video I doubt it will have this technology anytime soon. Flash can't even do this yet. Let me tell you though Silverlight is a major pain to work with. It was designed by programming nerds for programming nerds.
 
ARF900 said:
Are you sure netflix uses silverlight? I stream netflix on my mac all the time and never had to install it.
Click to expand...

I stream netflix on my Mac all the time too, and yes, it uses Silverlight.
and you most likely did, but just didn't pay attention. Depending on which web browser you use
 
smetvid said:
As for Silverlight it has one major use for us right now. Kick butt live video streaming. Silverlight has smooth streaming that will adapt the quality of the video stream based on the users bandwidth and cpu speed. It also can use multicast video streaming which means a large campus only has to pull a video stream once and then it gets broadcast to everybody on the internal network. This is the only way we can stream to financial companies who have horrid bandwidth for thousands of employs. As much as I look forward to using HTML 5 video I doubt it will have this technology anytime soon. Flash can't even do this yet. Let me tell you though Silverlight is a major pain to work with. It was designed by programming nerds for programming nerds.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the insight. I was wondering what in the world was so nifty about silverlight. It's a pain to install, and just "feels flaky" if that makes any sense. I can understand why it exists though...
 
Bytor65 said:
Ohhh Nooo. Now 0.00001% won't work.

Seriously I don't have Silverlight and haven't noticed a web page that won't work.
Click to expand...

Then I'm guessing you've never heard of a little site called Netflix and their enormous quantities of instant play movies?
 
I like the new rumor about Hulu becoming compatible with iPad. This could make for some competition with Netflix and we could finally see a Netflix app? Makes sense on a screen that big, and Netflix has been porting to various devices and consoles lately. I can only hope!
 
samcraig said:
Really? Is it used by the same # of people that have netflix? Yeah. Didn't think so.
Click to expand...

I'm gonna have to go with this to anyone that thinks Netflix doesn't matter...

They are somewhere north of 10 million subscribers. Recent article claims they added 1 million in the 4th QTR of 09 alone.

Source: http://www.thestreet.com/story/10668507/1/netflixs-subscriber-base-hits-record.html

Also the fact Netflix as stated, has become an installed widget on Bluray players, HDTV's, Xbox, PS3, Wii, and has been aggresivly rolling out plug in's for nearly every "Set top box" available.

Netflix is why Blockbuster stores turn into fast food joints, brick and mortar movie rental shops have been and continue to be on the way out.
 
bossxii said:
I'm gonna have to go with this to anyone that thinks Netflix doesn't matter...

They are somewhere north of 10 million subscribers. Recent article claims they added 1 million in the 4th QTR of 09 alone.
Click to expand...

Exactly. And these customers are media savvy and have disposable income. Many, I am sure are iPad's demographics. So it would be very unfortunate for Netflix's streaming to NOT be supported.

Then again - Apple doesn't make a dime off of Netflix. They do make money off of their own iTunes.
 
samcraig said:
Exactly. And these customers are media savvy and have disposable income. Many, I am sure are iPad's demographics. So it would be very unfortunate for Netflix's streaming to NOT be supported.

Then again - Apple doesn't make a dime off of Netflix. They do make money off of their own iTunes.
Click to expand...

Ya this is my thinking, which does apply to Hulu as well. I guess if Hulu makes it I'll keep hope alive Netflix can :)
 
bossxii said:
Ya this is my thinking, which does apply to Hulu as well. I guess if Hulu makes it I'll keep hope alive Netflix can :)
Click to expand...

This is (again) why the iPad, while attractive, is restrictive by nature/business.

For me - the sum of the omissions/features no available vs the ones that are make the device not one I'd purchase as presented at the Keynote. I don't want to invest in a device that may or may not evolve to what I want/need at this point.

I'll be waiting to see how file structure/sharing works. What services can be streamed. If a future OS will answer some pet peeves I've had with the current iPhone (i.e. non integrated email inboxes and being able to tag one message and then another and mass delete rather than having to tag each and every message I want to kill) Sounds silly to some perhaps - but these are time wasters for me that if I'm going to "upgrade" or get a new device, I want to see fixed/changed.

I work for a news organization and I get flurries of emails. It's a HUGE pain an inconvenience on the iPhone to have to tag a bunch of emails I don't need or want to read individually. I put up with it on the iPhone (for now). I'm really hoping that the next full OS takes things like this into consideration. And on the iPad - where there is even more real estate and supposedly is "the best email experience" - there's a fix.
 
It's more that MS (Silverlight maker) doesn't support the iPad... and fair to say that Apple isn't helping the situation. That said, Silverlight didn't work on OSX for over a year after Netflix started their Instant Watch, either.

Anyone know if the set top box Netflix players use Silverlight? I mean, there's no reason for them too. The Silverlight player doesn't dictate an encoder format, so they could just be streaming the core video files to the boxes player (there's a blog post on Netflix's official blog somewhere explaining what codecs they use - all h264 now, but used to use some WMV crap awhile ago).

No reason to think that they would need MS/Silverlight support to make a Netflix steaming app, I guess is what I am saying. I REALLY hope they do. If Netflix and Hulu get off their butts and Apple gives us wireless syncing, or better, streaming from shared local iTunes libraries the iPad will replace a second AppleTV and the whole bedroom TV for that matter.
 
I think we can safely conclude the iPhone OS (iPhone & iPad) won't support any proprietary web technology. So if you want to reach all iPhone OS users, you have to go with HTML, CSS and Javascript.
 
~~Hello~~ said:
Not got silverblight installed and can't think of any website that I would go to where I would need it. :D
Click to expand...


well, do you plan on watching any of the Olympics online? Sure, the Winter Olympics is not as popular as the Summer games, and most folks are not athletic, but the Olympics is a big deal.


the last Summer Olympics NBC streamed thousands and thousands of hours of live coverage over the internet, and did it quite well, and not one minute of it was available to any device that did not have Silverlight installed.

Sure Microsoft and NBC are best buds....but NBC has the Olympics.......

not exactly sure why Apple has become so plug-in-phobic, except for the obvious economic incentive...:mad:
 
fishmoose said:
I think we can safely conclude the iPhone OS (iPhone & iPad) won't support any proprietary web technology. So if you want to reach all iPhone OS users, you have to go with HTML, CSS and Javascript.
Click to expand...

You mean other than HTML5 which is an Apple/Google creation? Apple supports Apple proprietary web technology. But then it is an Apple product and as long as Microsoft is around, Apple can't be sued for monopolistic practices. But Apple is getting bigger.
 
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