« Previous post
Next post »

January 6, 2008

Microsoft Silverlight Gets a High Profile Win: 2008 Beijing Olympics

Michael Arrington

31 comments »

NBC announced today that they are working with Microsoft and MSN to build NBCOlympics.com. That announcement alone is a snoozer. What’s interesting is that they’ll be using the Microsoft Silverlight platform to “deliver deeply immersive user experiences.”

The partnership was announced by Bill Gates at the CES keynote this evening in Las Vegas. The new site will host 2,200 hours of live event video coverage, with more than 20 simultaneous live video streams at peak times. An additional 3,000 hours of on-demand video will be available, including full event replays and highlights.

Silverlight will be used for an “enhanced playback mode” and will allow full screen viewing “that is as good or better than anything on the Internet today.” There will also be metadata overlays that enable viewers to additional content like results, statistics, bios, rules and expert analysis.

This is good news for Microsoft and their nascent Silverlight platform. What I want to know is how much Microsoft paid NBC to use this. It’s highly unlikely they chose it without an additional nudge. Testing a new platform at the Olympics carries significant risk. And since no one really uses Silverlight yet, this will require millions of people to download the Silverlight framework before they can use the advanced features of the site.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 6th, 2008 at 8:36 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. Silverlight Guide

    January 6th, 2008 at 8:56 pm

  2. The Next Generation Web : 2008 Tech Business Predictions, 43 days into the new year

    March 10th, 2008 at 8:17 pm

  3. Olympics a Changed Event Thanks to Internet

    April 4th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Jon

    January 6th, 2008 at 8:44 pm

    NBC is owned in part by Microsoft, I don’t remember if it was a merger, acquisition or statement of understanting… what would have been REAL news is if a non-affiliated company like CNN, Fox or ABC did this with them. This is no different then Microsoft announcing that Vista will now work with Zune to deliver music to the masses.

    Jon

  2. Jeff Greco

    January 6th, 2008 at 8:46 pm

    Great way to start building a userbase. Smart move, Microsoft.

  3. Michael Arrington

    January 6th, 2008 at 8:48 pm

    you’re getting mixed up with MSNBC

  4. maya

    January 6th, 2008 at 8:48 pm

    Installing Silverlight requires admin privileges. Most of us don’t have that on corporate networks, or as in my case, the university network.

  5. Technicle

    January 6th, 2008 at 8:52 pm

    Silverlight is as a must install like Flash for modern day computing.. every responsible sysadmin should really cater that availability for the general users!!!

  6. Dan Saki

    January 6th, 2008 at 8:57 pm

    But still, Microsoft and NBC have had a working relationship for years, and it was out of this partnership that msnbc was born. MS working with NBC with silverlight is just a natural extension of that.

  7. Duncan Riley

    January 6th, 2008 at 8:59 pm

    I’m surprised you found a positive from the presentation…I must have slept through that part :-)

  8. Technicle

    January 6th, 2008 at 9:10 pm

    Interesting to see how the TC “editorial board” works.. ;-)

    In any case, people just love to hate microsoft, and hate to love google…

  9. uploadchoice

    January 6th, 2008 at 9:41 pm

    Microsoft has build good relationship with China and Asian countries, I hope some they will deliver some high technology in London Olympic too.

  10. random_graph

    January 6th, 2008 at 9:43 pm

    Can you clarify “20 simultaneous live video streams at peak time”?
    Although I bet opening ceremonies could draw 200K, most events would not be more than 20K?

    Silverlight is no surprise. Never count out MSFTs leverage to play catch-up. NBC would never use FMS2 due to cost, and Flash 9 (using FMS3) penetration is probably not much higher than Silverlight.

  11. Bernard Moon

    January 6th, 2008 at 9:48 pm

    My former company, Innotive, which I still advise has built a live streaming video wall (100 video streams) with their software on top of Microsoft’s Silverlight platform. It’s pretty cool:

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZP1-eLaGXqA

  12. thinlight

    January 6th, 2008 at 10:30 pm

    Typo in the title: Beijing, not Bejing :)

  13. Ryan Stewart

    January 6th, 2008 at 10:48 pm

    @random_graph What?! Flash Player 9 is at around 96% (http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html). Silverlight doesn’t have penetration numbers out but it’s well, WELL below that. Penetration isn’t the reason NBC went with Silverlight over FMS3.

  14. Ryan Stewart

    January 6th, 2008 at 10:48 pm

    Sorry,

    =Ryan
    rstewart@adobe.com

  15. Michael Arrington

    January 6th, 2008 at 11:11 pm

    typo fixed, thanks.

  16. Michael Sync

    January 6th, 2008 at 11:12 pm

    nice move, MS. :) i love that idea.. this is the way of forcing people to use Silverlight plugin.. :) good good..

  17. Divya

    January 6th, 2008 at 11:48 pm

    @Bernard Moon

    Nice demo, I want one!

  18. liquidboy

    January 7th, 2008 at 12:23 am

    For the non-tech savvy people. Silverlight is an amazing technology that deserves all the exposure it gets.

    Don’t judge it just because it’s an MS technology, it really is innovative in what it can do and the potential of where it can go.

    Great move microsoft!

  19. Mark

    January 7th, 2008 at 1:58 am

    Hey, we are talking about MS. They can easily auto install it on the users Computer if they want.

  20. JA

    January 7th, 2008 at 3:15 am

    I’ve been using it and its rock solid, I happy to see NBC using it, more people should get a chance to try it.

  21. wortwart

    January 7th, 2008 at 4:34 am

    So let’s hope they get their Silverlight running on Opera and on Linux by 2008. Especially their ignorance of Opera is a nuisance to me.

  22. LionardoMasseratti

    January 7th, 2008 at 7:29 am

    Failure!
    I won’t install anything in my macbook.
    I don’t trust M$ and I don’t care about all undercover M$ofties astroturfing here in TC

    Leave the olympics alone!

    Despicable, trying to force millions of people to use their shitty technology strongarming and bribing everybody.

    Sick of M$!

  23. Mark Ashton

    January 7th, 2008 at 10:40 am

    MSFT does not “own” NBC or any part of the company. NBC is wholly owned by General Electric. Microsoft used to have a partnership with NBC on the MSNBC network and Website. A year or two ago NBC took over full ownership of the network. The networks still provides content to the MSNBC portal but there is no equity investment between the two companies.

  24. tofu

    January 7th, 2008 at 4:26 pm

    This will be a strategic win for MS in terms of adding market share and mindshare, but it will probably be a disaster for NBC, who will have to deal with a lot of public bashlash and a lot of buggy site functionality. Now that Flash supports H.264 videos and hardware-accelerated full-screen video, Silverlight doesn’t really even have a competitive advantage.

  25. Jamus

    January 7th, 2008 at 6:49 pm

    Great. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD wars are just settling down and now we have to deal with Flash vs Silverlight. Meanwhile both installs will continue to get bigger and bigger and get more information from the user. Not to mention the last time I checked, Microsoft had left Mac users out in the cold for Silverlight content creation.

  26. johnnykrisma

    January 7th, 2008 at 8:42 pm

    Once again, MS rather than supporting a perfectly good existing technology with almost ubiquitous distribution would rather screw with users and release a product that will be half as goo for the first 4 releases. They’ll pay numerous sites to use said technology, thereby forcing any competitor out of the field. Then they’ll sit on aforementioned technology until some new rebels come out with something that forces them to get off their completely unoriginal, unimaginative asses. It’s the browser wars all over again. Whatever…

  27. Non User

    January 8th, 2008 at 8:22 am

    Silverlight who? This will most likely be a total failure. I am a PC Guy and actually like most of the Microsoft stuff. But this forced non standard platform I will not load. Guess I’ll just watch it elsewhere. This is reminiscent of the terrible Real Player that forced my machines to default to that terrible platform. I am a multimedia designer by trade and will not use Real. Flash would have been perfect for reaching a mass audience. I was luckly enough to work with the great team that produced the 2000 Sydney Olympics and they all Rocked! Too Bad NBC and the IOC screwed everything up. Oh well… maybey they will get it right for the Winter Olympics in 2010. 2008— what a mistake.

  28. Michael

    January 29th, 2008 at 7:47 pm

    I love Silverlight!!! I think it has some better things going for it than Flash, and I think this is a great way to get it out to the masses for people to try.

    I hope the site functions well.

« Previous post
Next post »