How NBC, NFL Will Stream Sunday Night Football

"Perkins Miller said the network struck a broad deal with Microsoft to use Silverlight and its Smooth Streaming technology to deliver high-definition streaming video for its major sporting events"

In other words, instead of picking the best solution for their customers, the NFL will be offering inferior technology because Microsoft was willing to write a check with a whole lot of zeros.  Between restricting the amount of content avaialble online and forcing users to deal with a bulky plugin, it's no surprise that piracy is such a problem for these established media brands.

So what would you suggest -- NBC should continue to use Adobe Flash? I wonder if every time Microsoft lands a deal for Silverlight the content provider be accused of doing it for the money. I had no problems with Silverlight last summer for the Olympics -- the video quality was great. I'll hold off on criticizing the deal until I see how the football games look in a few weeks. 

My suggestion would be for more companies to take advantage of the upcoming html5 video tags and avoid all third party plugins as a result.  In the meantime, if flash is the best solution for consumers then all the power to Adobe.  What I don't want to have is 2nd rate technology forced upon consumers just because someone is willing to pay a lot of money to convince a company to partner with them.  As far as the limitations to silverlight goes, there is still much to be desired.  For example, if you have an HD monitor that doesn't use a protected cable, you're not allowed to watch the Olympics on your computer.  Why should Microsoft get to dictate terms like this to consumers.  Another restriction is that there's no way to download the content on the go.  While other plugins have the same limitations, it sure would be nice to watch content without having to be connected to the net. 

As far as accusing content providers for doing it for the money, I'm not sure how you can believe that they are doing it for any other reason.  It's well known that Microsoft paid $1 billion to get this very contract.  If their technology was choosen because it is the best, why the need for such an obscene payment?

While HTML5 certainly has its benefits, I think you really need to compare Flash streaming side by side with Smooth on Silverlight to get a better idea of what it's capacity is.  I've been in the (streaming) industry since Xing days and this is by far the most capable and quality end-to-end solution that's come out.

Sure Silverlight has some limitations, but Flash had a 10 year head start and that Microsoft has made the strides it has in two short years is more promising than anything Adobe has come up with for Flash anytime recently.  Can you please point out specifically how Silverlight is second rate?  I develop both, in fact I develop more Flash than Silverlight hands-on, but the benefits of Silverlight far outweigh its drawbacks.

And why the complaint about the inability to download - that's the point!  Why should we as consumers - non-paying consumers at that - be allowed to store content owned by someone else?  Do you have a reason to want to hold onto it?  Why not use the network and get it on-demand?  We do it with cable pay-per-view, why is this any different?  You're still connected to a cable and you're still only getting the one shot at viewing.

$1 million? So what? Just because Adobe wouldn't pony up the rights, why shoot down MSFT?  It's like any other sports licensing deal, handed off to the highest bidder.  The NFL is still a business, don't you try to profit from your own business deals?

"Perkins Miller said the network struck a broad deal with Microsoft to use Silverlight and its Smooth Streaming technology to deliver high-definition streaming video for its major sporting events"

I wanted to complain about the slow rate of growth in NFL live streams but having just ordered from pinkdot.com which I thought no longer existed plus the news about silverlight topped off with my extended Marina Delrey visit isn't allowing me to complain about anything.

A few things on HTML5:

1)  Does not support Live, therefore not a valid option for the NFL.

2)  There is not a "standard" yet - instead there is all of this inter-industry argument about what the standard *might* look like one day.

3)  Does not yet have a rich UI framework ala Silverlight or Flash.

Simple - HTML5 is not yet and will not be a valid option for months, maybe years.

Thanks for the feedback, Mat. I didn't get a chance to check out the live football video on NBCSports.com. I'm curious to see how much traffic NBC generated from the game -- will post the numbers as soon as they're available.