WPF/E = Silverlight

Published 16 April 07 11:59 AM | Jesse Ezell

One of the reasons WPF/E is going to give Flash a real run for it's money is the video story. Unlike Flash, Silverlight (the new name) will support DRM, it supports the industry standard VC-1 codec used in HD-DVD and Blueray, and it can take advantage of the built-in media streaming capabilities of IIS. The video story is better just about any way you look at it with Silverlight as far as content providers are concerned. It's cheaper, it's faster, etc.

Add to that the fact that you get to use C# instead of actionscript as well as use XAML for your UI dev and Adobe should really be pissing their pants right now. Silverlight is so much better than Flash in just about every way. It's about time someone got it right.

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/

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Comments

# Alex G said on April 16, 2007 12:42 PM:

As long as WPE is windows IE only, it wont give anyone a run for money. The DRM feature is sweet... Lets add the technology consumers hate the most and that has been dying for years.

# Rich said on April 16, 2007 02:25 PM:

WPF/E will run on Windows and Max OSX in IE, Safari and Firefox.  No Linux support and I don't know if that's planned.

I agree with the DRM thing though - I'm sure it will be a pain logistically and legally to implement.

# Jesse Ezell said on April 16, 2007 02:30 PM:

Whether or not you like DRM or think it is a pain to set up, lots of people, like the companies that want to stream TV and movies over the web, will not consider any method that doesn't allow for DRM protection. In any case, DRM has never been a big deal for streaming, hell, your cable provider already does it for it's content and you probably never noticed. It's a much bigger deal for content stored locally, but that's not the scenario WPF/E is addressing anyway.

# Quentin Cole said on April 23, 2007 04:32 PM:

Adobe also announced the Adobe Media Player recently.  It supports DRM, and the codecs are higher quality and smaller size than WMV anyway.  And if the content providers are going to make a push for online media (which I doubt anyway, they haven't caught on yet) than they will hopefully be pushing for quality.

# D. Figuerres said on September 3, 2007 03:14 PM:

cross browser + .net that's the real deal on why silverlight is going to be a hot tech....

# B said on October 1, 2007 09:33 AM:

Silverlight will have a xNix port called Moonlight, so very cross-system compatible.

# Gear said on November 24, 2007 06:46 AM:

When will we see SilverLight + C# becoming the way I was used to make Windows application ?

Since I did a SilverLight application today with no controls at all,  Seems that I'm waiting for the Tools like Expression Blend or VS 2008 to give me a Designer with wich I will add controls like TextBox, ListBox, ComboBox, and everything I need to create RIA application

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