Netflix plans to dump Silverlight for HTML5 streaming

[steve2470]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57579753-93/netflix-plans-to-dump-silverlight-for-html5-streaming/

Due to eroding support for browser plugins, Netflix is making plans to move its streaming service from Silverlight over to the emerging HTML5 video format.

The movie-streaming service has used the Microsoft plugin to deliver streaming content to Windows and Mac OSX computers since 2008. But after Microsoft announced last month that it would end support of the browser versions of the plugin by 2021, it became clear Netflix needed to focus on a replacement.

While the solution seemed to present itself with Google's announcement last month that Netflix was now available on an ARM-based Samsung Chromebook, the movie service has it has been working for the past year on solutions to several disadvantages with the plugin. Netflix's Anthony Park and Mark Watson listed a host of disadvantages the company hopes to overcome, including the increasingly limited ability to use plugins on devices and mobile browsers.

"We're interested to solve these problems as we move to our next generation of video playback on the Web," the pair wrote in a company blog post outlining efforts to overcome those issues. "Over the last year, we've been collaborating with other industry leaders on three W3C initiatives which are positioned to solve this problem of playing premium video content directly in the browser without the need for browser plugins such as Silverlight."

[hobbit709]

1. Silverlight-another crappy resource hog from M$.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

2. ^^^ this ^^^

all day long