Netflix the worlds biggest online movie rental provider has announced that it will begin to use Microsoft’s Silverlight to provide instant viewing of movies and TV shows on PC and Macintosh computers.

Beginning as a trial for a small number of subscribers, the plan is to then roll out of the new platform to all Netflix subscribers by the end of the year.

The Silverlight media player provides an eye catching and professional experience for viewers and supplies streaming content across a number of platforms and web browsers. Viewers will see a faster and easier connection including a new timeline navigation feature that massively improves fast forwarding and rewinding on movies and tv shows.

The new Netflix player takes advantage of PlayReady DRM, which is built
into Silverlight, for the playback of protected content on both
Windows-based PCs and on Macs. That had not been possible with previous generation technologies.

Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt commented:- ‘Silverlight with PlayReady offers a powerful and secure toolkit for delivery of dynamic streaming, which offers faster start-up, and higher quality video, adapted in real time to users’ connection speeds. Members who enjoy watching moviesand TV episodes from the growing library of choices that can be instantly streamed at Netflix will be thrilled with this next generation improvement of access and quality, on a broader range of platforms, including Intel Macs and Firefox systems.”

Scott Guthrie the corporate vice president Microsoft said:- ‘Instantly streaming from Netflix directly addresses the needs and wants of today’s Web users by providing on-demand, high quality online video. By using Silverlight, Netflix can deliver to its subscribers a higher quality video experience on the Web, on more platforms.”

Streaming online videois usually associated with the Flash player which has certain constraints such as low quality and unsatisfactory full screen viewing. With Silverlight media can be shown at high definition quality of 720p and in correct full-screen rather than a maximized web browser. We now have a web based streaming system that can compete with DVD and offline tv quality.

worldtvpc.com

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