Major League Baseball Dumps Silverlight For Flash 388
christian.einfeldt writes "This week, Major League Baseball will open without Microsoft's Silverlight at the plate, according to Bob Bowman, CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which handles much of the back-end operations for MLB and several other leagues and sporting events. The change was decided on last year but was set to be rolled out this spring. Among the causes of MLB's disillusionment with Silverlight were technical glitches users experienced, including needing administrator privileges to install the plugin (often impossible in workplaces). Baseball's opening day last year was plagued by Silverlight instability, with many users unable to log on and others unable to watch games. Adobe Flash already exists on 99% of user machines, said Bowman, and Adobe is 'committed to the customer experience in video with the Flash Player.' MLBAM's decision to dump Silverlight is particularly problematic for Microsoft's effort to compete with Adobe, due to the fact that MLBAM handles much of the back-end operations for CBS' Webcasts of the NCAA Basketball Tournament and this year will do the encoding for the 2009 Masters golf tournament."
That's like saying (Score:4, Interesting)
"Major League Baseball Dumps Pact with Demons for Pact with the Devil."
has anyone seen high quality flv? (Score:3, Interesting)
HTML 5? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why make the leap in the first place? (Score:3, Interesting)
The new flash player for MLB.TV this year is a vast improvement on their previous efforts. There's still a few bugs in it, but for the most part it's better.
That said, Flash needs a competitor. It seriously needs one. It's astonishing that it's had so much market share for so long.
Re:Why make the leap in the first place? (Score:3, Interesting)
Silverlight FAQ [microsoft.com]
Silverlight supports what users ask it to support.
Oh, and a link to one of the formats it supports
WMV file format [digitalpreservation.gov]
pwnd
Re:MSFT Icon is stale. (Score:2, Interesting)
Is referring to companies by their stock symbol some new trend, or do people who frequently do that actually trade stocks a significant amount and have a reason to feel more comfortable with "MSFT" than "Microsoft"?
Is it just shorter?
Re:Why make the leap in the first place? (Score:5, Interesting)
I interviewed with them a few years ago.
MLB.com had all their video in WMV and a pre-exisitng Windows Media Server infrastructure, because they were very concerned about rights management.
Because they were a big Flash shop, they had to do a lot of mixing and matching Flash and JS to work with Windows Media player.
When Silverlight came out, it looked like it would be an all-in-one deal that would let them retain their existing video infrastructure and clips, and be able to better utilize them inside the RIA's they build.
They gave it a shot because it cost them almost nothing, MLB.com is rolling in dough and gets free stuff all the time because they're high profile.
Re:Why make the leap in the first place? (Score:4, Interesting)
>> Flash is no less proprietary.
Technically true, but still less of an issue than Silverlight. Silverlight is proprietary and owned by the company with a near monopoly on consumer operating systems. Adobe is proprietary but they have no reason to prefer one platform over another (aside from marketshare of course), and so are very unlikely to sabotage other platforms at any point in the future.
On the other hand, it might be very beneficial for Microsoft to sabotage other platforms (and they already are, just by not even offering an _official_ linux player).
Re:Why make the leap in the first place? (Score:1, Interesting)
I have a feeling that they probably went to Flex not Flash which none the less produces content that is played in FlashPlayer. Flash is now on ActionScript 3 and Flex IS open-source and you can get a free mxml compiler and so far from Flash in terms of RIA creation that it is hardly fair to consider it Flash. I know the article says they went to Flash, but trust me if they are smart, they are using Flash for animation and Flex for creating internet experiences. Flex is an open standard with a strong company behind it. Adobe acquiring Macromedia put the Flash technology in the right hands, and frankly Microsoft got in the game too late and their negative brand recognition hardly makes them an underdog likely to pull ahead of this particular race. However, it makes sense that the Microsoft empire would have the resources and connections to make a deal with this big a player in the first place. They probably had existing connections and they just got in first. Its good to know though that at the end of the day quality and stable user experience are what are driving the decisions and not merely hopping on the latest technology bandwagon.
Re:Why make the leap in the first place? (Score:3, Interesting)
Are there any decent free platforms for developing for Flash using actionscript? For a hobbyist like me I can't afford to plunk the change down for their IDE.
Re:Why make the leap in the first place? (Score:5, Interesting)
Considering they threaten to sue anyone who uses the term "World Series", that doesn't surprise me.
Every time I hear some poor minimum-wage sports radio announcer have to use the term "The Fall Classic" when he really means the Series, I spit on Major League Baseball.
Next, they'll want me to call White Sox Park "US Cellular Field" instead of the canonical "Comiskey Field".
Which reminds me, has anybody else noticed the amazing discipline that McDonalds has forced sportscasters to exercise now that All-Americans have become "McDonalds All-Americans".
During every broadcast I watched of the NCAA tourney, whenever there was mention of the top high-school players, it was always "McDonalds All-Americans" and nobody even choked on it once.
MLB.com longtime paying customer (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why make the leap in the first place? (Score:5, Interesting)
True points, but Flash on Linux from Adobe is less 'open' than Silverlight from Microsoft. Did you happen to notice that Adobe used what they had opened and jumped through some licensing hoops to get you their 'proprietary' Flash player?
Microsoft has considered doing the same, but it would involve either opening up the Vista API to open source, or make them shove together a fully closed solution with less functionality.
Microsoft turning Silverlight over t Mono and the Moonlight project is a win win, as Microsoft doesn't have to open their precious 'IP' that is non-Silverlight related from the Vista APIs, and yet it gives users a full open source solution.
If you want to support open source, Silverlight is your donkey to bet on, if you want Adobe semi-open solutions, keep using Flash and be happy.
I can remember when people were in love with Apple for opening up Darwin and the OS X kernel as required for the BSD and MACH licensing, but when it came to OS X and the 'Apple' portions, people realized the opening of Darwin was to get the rights to the code and also 'use' the community and repackage everything back under the upper levels of OS X and a sue happy Apple.
Adobe didn't make their Linux Flash player to be 'good' to the Linux community, they made it to regain control of the Linux community that was going the way of the open 'Flash' players that Adobe had no control over. And apparently their 'play' to win the Linux users worked, as you are an example of a Flash fan happily installing a non-open Flash player that has full Adobe control.
- MS has virtually no control over moonlight, and also seems pretty good about providing the mono team with what they need to replicate both Silverlight and other .NET features.
Re:Why make the leap in the first place? (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed. I used Flashdevelop professionally and it's far better than most IDEs I've come across including Sepy. Sepy is nice, but it's aging poorly. Hopefully, FD will get the supposed Mono/Linux client in the back lot of the forum working soonish.
A more accurate analogy: (Score:5, Interesting)
Bad analogy. This is the correct analogy:
"My puppy has bitten me severely several times and I understand when he is larger the bites may be even worse."
Haven't you heard of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" [wikipedia.org]? Here are 6,780 links [google.com].
Re:Why make the leap in the first place? (Score:2, Interesting)
I have an extensive group of friends, and despite your accusations, none of them are wearing my underwear.
All of those that use computers come from a variety of computer-use scenarios, yet the vast consensus I speak of is derived from a meta-analysis of the following general points:
- What the hell is Silverlight?
- I've never been to a site that needs it.
- A microsoft product? I'm not installing it.
- Umm, no. Flash is better and everyone uses it already.
- Silverlight is just a wanna-be flash.
Let me help:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/080509-105719 [searchenginewatch.com]
http://www.riapedia.com/2008/04/14/how_many_visitors_have_silverlight_installed [riapedia.com]
I'd say 1.5M vs 12M is a big difference. Silverlight is a distraction..... Focus Mr Ratzo, focus!
Re:Worst part of the Mac OS X (Score:2, Interesting)
It's the install base (Score:4, Interesting)
They were counting on the massive market share of Vista to put it over.
Oops.
Pay service? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's too bad that MLB charges money for this service. Considering the number of ads that naturally fit into a baseball game broadcast, it should still be profitable to broadcast it for free. This works well for TV stations which broadcast baseball games, and it's also been very successful for the web broadcasts of the NCAA basketball tournament in recent years.
Of course, it's not free because the MLB won't pass up this (or any) chance to make money. Never mind the fact that the game broadcasts themselves are also ads, since the fans often buy merchandise and tickets.
I would love to see the day come when virtually any sporting event is broadcast online for free. The economics seem to add up. Because of the importance of a live broadcast, and the frequency of breaks in the action, ads actually make sense as a way to pay for sports broadcasts. I don't often tolerate ads for any other sort of video.