Microsoft using Beijing Olympics to boost Silverlight takeup

by Stephen Withers

Thursday, 31 July 2008

Page 1 of 2 ! Webcasting of the Bejing 2008 Olympic Games by NBC and MSN could be the Trojan Horse that gets Microsoft's Silverlight 2 onto a large number of PCs in America. Silverlight is Microsoft's software for delivering rich Internet applications. It competes with Flash, which Adobe claims is installed on 99 percent of Internet-enabled PCs worldwide. Perhaps the most significant difference between the two is that Silverlight was designed to appeal to Windows developers by providing a subset of the .NET framework. Silverlight projects can be coded in C#, Visual Basic and JavaScript. NBC and MSN will be showing more than 3000 hours of live and on-demand content during the games, with up to 20 simultaneous streams from at least 34 sports. Individual users will be able to watch up to four streams simultaneously, and Silverlight automatically and dynamically adjusts the delivery bit rate in accordance with network conditions. "NBCOlympics.com on MSN will give sports fans an Olympics experience online like never before, allowing them to watch what they want, when they want," said Perkins Miller, senior vice president of digital media for NBC Universal Sports & Olympics. "Microsoft’s Silverlight 2 technology will give users a remarkable online Olympics experience. The combination of MSN and Silverlight will truly put the users in control," he added. The coverage will include results, statistics and athlete information. Users will be able to set alerts for particular events, and share the feed they are currently watching with a friend. Is SIlverlight essential for watching the NBC/MSN Olympics coverage? Find out on page 2. << First page <   1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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