Silverlight HD Smooth Video Streaming

Introduction:
Microsoft Silverlight, it’s like the Adobe Flash and is a direct competitor to Flash. It’s a web application that delivers rich graphics, animations, web UI; but there seems to be so much yet to discover. We’ll discuss about the innovative technology of Silverlight Player streaming High Definition videos… with zero buffer!

Next is here. Microsoft Silverlight has gain more publicity with its smooth HD video streaming.

How it works?
Silverlight automatically adjusts with the speed of your ISP and downscales the resolution of the HD video, resulting smooth streaming. For the official demo, you can go to this address from your web browser, http://www.iis.net/media/experiencesmoothstreaming.

From the above link, at the upper-left corner of the player, is the frame rate(fps) graph. At the upper right, shows you the bit rate(kbps) of how much the player is downloading from your ISP each second. There is also a bar of ‘Limit Max Bit Rate’ where you can control the player to limit with the bandwidth you want. This ‘Limit Max Bit Rate’ allows you to make high or standard definition streaming as well as it do not try to pursue to higher bandwidth than your ISP carry which results smooth streaming. There’s a graph showing you the bandwidth that the player’s having from your ISP connection. The minimum speed you require to have from your ISP is 350kbps or let’s say 512kbps; as your ISP may not give you 350kb/ 350kb each second!
What’s Microsoft Silverlight’s objective?

The main thing about the Silverlight Smooth Streaming Technology is that you can see ‘live’ videos almost buffer-less. There had already been live web broadcasts of some sports events of NBC Universal in U.S. powered by Microsoft Silverlight Smooth Streaming. Microsoft have got partners to expand its Silverlight Smooth Streaming for lilve web broadcasts. One of them is ‘Twofour Digital – twofourdigital.com.’ This company provides live web broadcasts for their clients using Silverlight Smooth Streaming technology.

Where can I find Silverlight Smooth Streaming on web?

Till now, Microsoft is lagging behind its marketing strategy. Still video.msn.com use Adobe Flash for the video streaming! Anyway, for more Silverlight Smooth HD videos, one can go to SmoothHD.com. There are lots of HD video samples you can test. You can also find Silverlight Smooth Streaming in NetFlix.
Microsoft Xbox 360 has it. You can find it in Zune and NetFlix under Video Marketplace of your Xbox 360 dashboard. Every video under these sections starts with the Silverlight Smooth Streaming. The Xbox 360 dashboard does not completely support this technology but Microsoft is trying to embed Silverlight Smooth Streaming on its Xbox 360 as much as possible.
What’s the compatibility of Silverlight?

As stated in wikipedia.org, Silverlight is compatible with of course Microsoft Windows, and Apple Mac OS 10. ‘Novell’ developed Moonlight, a free software to have Silverlight functionality in Linux, FreeBSD and other open source platforms. Around 2010, Symbian Series 60 mobile devices will support Silverlight. Also the upcoming Microsoft Windows Mobile 7 is likely to have Silverlight. Skyfire, a mobile web browser for Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60(3rd edition) has a Silverlight plugin along with Flash and Quicktime
from version 1.1 onwards.