Internet Video, Not Taking Off As Fast As….

Silverlight seems to be taking off a lot slower than I anticipated. One problem is it doesn’t work on Linux. There is Moonlight, but, its not so obvious. Here I am browsing my blog on my Xubuntu desktop, and I visit a blog entry I made awhile ago on Silverlight (at the time on an XP desktop), and I can’t view my video.

It advertises for the provider, it says “Get Microsoft Silverlight”. I click it, and it takes me to a Microsoft page that tells me Silverlight may not be supported on my hardware or software. No Linux download links on the Microsoft site. You’d think they would at least point me to the Moonlight Mono page. All this talk at Mix08 about Microsoft supporting the Moonlight-Mono effort, but they don’t link to it from their pages. What’s wrong with this picture? When I browse the net, all I see is Flash. I’m not seeing Silverlight take off, why? Because its not cross platform, imo. Not really. Its ported to Mac, and the Linux world is trying to copy it, but its not having such an easy time with it. But, its due to more than lack of cross platform.

I’m actually pretty surprised Silverlight didn’t take off like wild fire during the ’08 Olympics. I work at a company filled with tech geeks, and I heard people talking about the Olympics, but not about Silverlight. They weren’t watching it online! It’s pretty cool that all the events were recorded, and you could find anything you missed online, but you know what the problem is!? Most of the world doesn’t have their desktop or laptop easily connected to their TV. When it comes to video, most people want to sit on their couch or lay in their bed and watch.

Cox Communications On-Demand service had Olympic coverage too, for free. Not every event from multiple angles, but a pretty darn good collection. I spent more time watching the Olympics, in bed, via Cox On-Demand, than I did online with Silverlight.

You know, with Eyespot closing shop, and Silverlight not taking off,there is something to be said about multi-media and the web. Everyone thought the web movement to video was taking off. Apparently not as fast as everyone thought. YouTube is very popular, and I think that YouTube’s popularity sparked a frenzy in Software development shops to make better multi-media tools for the Internet community. What they missed is – the market for video online is end users messing around making home movies. They don’t want Hollywood productions and advertisements – they want the real thing. People capturing regular people doing funny things. They want to laugh. When it comes time to be serious, to research, to work, I think people are still turning to the Internet to read, the old fashioned way. I still do. If I want video, I get comfortable and turn on the TV.

DaveK

35 thoughts on “Internet Video, Not Taking Off As Fast As….”

  1. Right after writing this, I installed the Novell Moonlight 1.0b Firefox add-on for Firefox from http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/, restarted my browser, and tried to load my http://www.koopman.me/2008/05/silverlight-live-pinetop-shiloh-boots/ page that loads my video from the silverlight.services.live.com site, and the video box appears, but then tells me I must install the codecs from Microsoft to view it. I do, and it says to reload the page. I do, and it tells me to install the codecs from Microsoft again. I reload the browser, and return, same thing. I can’t get the video to view on my Linux desktop. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but the problem is its not simple. Linux users are struggling to view Silverlight videos. If its not super simple, its just not going to take off. For what its worth, Flash sites work fine on my Xubuntu desktop. Always did, never had to install anything, its just worked out of the gate. That’s what it takes for it to work. I don’t know what Microsoft’s plan is to make Silverlight hit the mainstream, but they’re missing the simplicity factor.

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