Very interesting Twitter conversation last with my boss regarding the practicality of various UK video-on-demand services. Blinkbox was giving her tremendous grief, Film4 wasn’t allowing her to use hyphens in an email address, and Netflix UK – while working well enough right up until a Flash upgrade somehow knocked out Silverlight – doesn’t have sufficient content (not unless one VPNs over to US and Canada).
The discussion got around to Silverlight. Why DO these services rely on a technology unique to Microsoft and is limited to two desktop platforms? After all, Silverlight will not function under Linux because the DRM components haven’t been ported over to Moonlight (the Linux “version” of Silverlight). Flash/Air isn’t the greatest platform either – I’ve encountered my fair share of Air issues on the Mac when dealing with BBC’s iPlayer desktop app – but they were resolved pretty quickly and with minimum of fuss.
Memset, for whom I work, have a number of media companies on our books – and we also have connections with a number of industry players. I would be exceedingly interested to meeting some of them to determine just why these services have gone down the Silverlight route (versus sticking with Adobe Air/Flash) and what it offers both the consumer and the broadcaster, because my experience as a consumer so far has been completely horrible when it comes to Silverlight. What does Microsoft have in store for the Silverlight brand? I’m still none the wiser with regards to it’s apparent uncertain future. What would take its place?
I am incredibly amused by the official Microsoft PlayReady(tm) page – all of it completely contradicts my experience of using it with Now TV and Blinkbox – the two services which offer a highly fragmented and varying experience of VoD. Licensing errors, confusing error messages, blank screens, full screen display problems – both of these services demand a premium and offer so little in return.