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Feature: Page (1) of 1 - 09/15/08

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And the Gold medal goes to. . . Microsoft's SilverStream?

If you can develop for Flash, you can develop for Silverlight+Media Services

By Matthew David

In a surprise move, NBC chose Microsoft's fledgling SilverStream technology to deliver video from its NBCOlympics.com Web site. SilverStream, with its cross browser and cross platform support uses Windows Media Server to manage the broadcast and access rights to WMV media.

What the customer sees - the presentation layer
A lot has happened since the Athens 2004 Olympics on the Web - the explosion of Web video, AJAX and Web 2.0 are just some of the big names. Coming into the Beijing 2008 Olympics, a Web savvy audience is expected to be dazzled. All 16 days rated highest for all broadcast stations. This is a viewership of tens of millions.

With so much riding on delivering the most content to the most people over the Internet you would think that NBC would be forced to use a tried and trusted technology to ensure that potential viewers would not be turned away. NBC did not. The broadcaster released its Web site using a beta software product installed on very few computers to do most of the heavy lifting - Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 Beta. 

Microsoft's Silverlight is frequently compared to Adobe's Flash. Both support video, both can connect to external data sources (such as XML) and both enable a designer to deliver a superior online experience that is difficult to achieve in HTML. The result for NBCOlympics.com is a Web site filled with thousands of hours of rich media content, such as video.

It was only 12 months ago that Silverlight officially reach 1.0 status. Less than a year later Silverlight 2.0 beta is being used to run one of the heaviest hit sites this summer. Why this move? There are lots of technical reasons why Silverlight is a great product, from its support of .NET, rich design environment to its capability to easily connect data to the interface. These are all great reasons - however, for NBC, the biggest reason is video.

Thanks to solutions such as YouTube, content providers do not think twice about adding video to the Web. For NBC, however, they could not rely on just adding video. They had two goals: provide a great video experience and ensure that the intellectual rites to the video firmly remain with NBC (that means "no video privacy").

Silverlight enables video to play back at the same speeds you have with your television. You can also view video in HD format. In addition to this, NBC was also able to add interactive elements to its full screen video presentations to enhance the viewer experience.

The video delivery is not new. Microsoft is able to use mature products, such as Media Services, through SilverLight to control the video content.

Delivering video over the Internet with Microsoft's Window Media Services
Microsoft was able to slam-dunk its pitch on using Silverlight by touting Silverlight's support for Media Services. Windows Media Services is Microsoft's video/audio media distribution service. Silverlight, for both PC and Mac, can receive video from Media Services in the same way that Windows Media Player can. What this means is that NBC is able to build rich client interactivity on top of a tried and trusted Internet video broadcasting solution.

The process for delivering content from Windows Media Services is demonstrated here:

Broadcasting video to millions of people is not easy. Microsoft is able to effectively do this through Media Services and provide the following functionality:

• Cache/Proxy Management
• Play while archiving
• Advanced Broadcast start
• Encoder Failover
• Dynamic Content Programming
• Secure Delivery

It can be argued that Adobe's Flash can provide all this. The caveat to using Flash is this: HD video is restricted to the latest release of the Flash Player, thereby requiring every visitor to upgrade their Flash Player; and, the video delivery tools for Flash are not as mature as Microsoft's. Microsoft's solutions are stress tested and do what they say they will do. At the end of the day, you can see that the choice is an almost no-brainer.

Bringing it all together
What makes NBCOlympics.com interesting is that NBC did not do anything exceptional. What is exceptional is the richness and amount of content, but the presentation is not too hard. Using Silverlight as the presentation tool and Windows Media Services as the delivery tool, you can create your interface designs with tools such as Microsoft Expression Blend and Visual Studio 2008. If you have a team that is developing a data driven site using Adobe's Flash then it can be argued that the same team can also deliver a solution using Silverlight+Media Services. Indeed, the final solution may be even more spectacular than NBCOlympics.com.