Silverlight 3 is out, and it looks phenomenal…
Today I read Techtroniks’ tweet that Silverlight 3 was out of beta, so I hit the link and checked it out. It wasn’t “Silverlight 3″ that interested me, it was the reference that it “joins forces with your CPU for HD streaming” (HD = High Definition, for you neophytes). Now, I’ve previously thought of Silverlight mostly as a Flash competitor, but being a fan of digital distribution, and hobbyist of home media networking, I found this intriguing.
There are two links in that article, one of which is a link to a demo showing this technology in action (albeit done in Silverlight 2 somehow), and another to their download web site. Here’s how the demo blew me away:
- absolutely zero buffering = instant streaming
- absolutely zero stuttering for 90% of the video, except for a brief minute in the middle where it was only as bad as any other Internet streaming I’ve ever seen
- the resolution was about 4x what you’re used to for Internet streaming (such as MSN Video), about 2x YouTube, and about the same as YouTube in HD
- I’m only on an 800 kbps link, and Silverlight adapted the video quality to approximately 400 kbps to compensate – the quality was approximately equivalent to an Xvid-encoded DVD rip
One thing to be clear on – the resolution of this (as well as YouTube `HD`) is NOT high definition. It`s about DVD resolution, which is still quite impressive for Internet streaming. Especially when that content is coming in with zero buffering and almost zero stuttering at 400 kbps.
Admittedly, we`ve already got digital distribution, and this technology doesn`t fundamentally change that. However, it makes it a nearly-transparent experience, which has the potential to change people`s perception of what digital distribution is. And that, potentially, is revolutionary.
