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Tuesday, November 18, 2008

MLB.com drops Silverlight for Adobe Flash

Golden Age Turtle Killed Off!

Microsoft is losing MLB.com, Major League Baseball’s online unit and one of the Web’s most successful subscription services, as a Silverlight customer.

MLB Advanced Media said Monday it will use Adobe’s Flash Platform to deliver all live and on-demand video starting next year.

The deal hands Adobe one of the largest and likely most profitable video services out there. MLB.com has signed up more than 1.5 million subscribers since 2003 and streams more than 2,500 regular and postseason games annually. Moreover, MLBAV has been a technological leader and is influential among Web video services.

...“Flash provides a TV-like experience, you turn it on and it works,” said Bob Bowman, president and CEO of MLBAV. “We want it to be flexible so we can add features…and it’s got to be scaleable. We are the largest server of live entertainment int he country. Whether we are serving 20,000 for one game or 250,000 for another game it’s got to be scaleable over periods of time like nothing else.”

Repoz Posted: November 18, 2008 at 12:29 AM | 22 comment(s) Login to Bookmark
Tags: business, media, online, television

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1. DKDC Posted: November 18, 2008 at 12:42 AM (#3011176)

Sweet.

2. Boileryard Posted: November 18, 2008 at 12:43 AM (#3011177)

I have no idea how good the Flash player will be, but I was never happy with the quality of the Silverlight feed. The 1.2M Silverlight feed always seemed a bit choppy. It certainly wasn't the TV-quality that it was billed as.

3. The Ghost of Pete Incaviglia Posted: November 18, 2008 at 12:48 AM (#3011180)

Bravo, MLB. Silverlight is garbage.

4. Zach Posted: November 18, 2008 at 12:49 AM (#3011182)

MLB had better watch out, or their broadcast might actually work in Linux next year.

When I'll be in Germany. Sigh...

5. birdlives is one crazy ninja Posted: November 18, 2008 at 12:51 AM (#3011186)

I approve as long Adobe fixes the full screen problem. All of my home feeds had a huge blank border last season.

6. Phil Coorey. Posted: November 18, 2008 at 01:22 AM (#3011201)

This is great news - Silverlight sucked.

7. Crashburn Alley Posted: November 18, 2008 at 01:42 AM (#3011219)

I echo the sentiment here -- I truly hated Silverlight. Hopefully, they make the videos more user-friendly, like allowing you to embed them to post on blogs or forums and adding a lot of tags so that you can easily find them with a search. The current set-up makes finding a specific video like the whole needle-in-a-haystack deal, y'know?

The "multimedia" section on a player's page is awful as well. They only go back the last couple months.

8. Esoteric Posted: November 18, 2008 at 01:49 AM (#3011227)

I never once used Silverlight. I heard the many complaints about its awfulness and stayed away, given my lack of confidence in my system. I have no problem with seeing it fail.

Flash has bugged me occasionally as well, but generally speaking it's a robust and usable format. This was the smart move.

9. phredbird

Posted: November 18, 2008 at 02:25 AM (#3011248)

agree. sliverlight (pun intended) just didn't deliver.

10. DKDC Posted: November 18, 2008 at 02:47 AM (#3011256)

MLB had better watch out, or their broadcast might actually work in Linux next year.

I got it to work under ubuntu using mlbviewer.

11. TOLAXOR Posted: November 18, 2008 at 02:52 AM (#3011259)

FIRST ALBERT AND NOW THIS??? WOW!!!

12. scareduck Posted: November 18, 2008 at 02:57 AM (#3011260)

A-men and hallelujah, brother. Silverfish was a disaster on Linux, and given MS's proclivity to virus-spawning and general contempt for security, there was no way in hell I was going to try it on any of my Macs. Not on YouTube and now not on one of the biggest live video providers. Die, Silverfish, die.

13. scareduck Posted: November 18, 2008 at 02:59 AM (#3011262)

#10: it works fine under Linux for Fedora Core 8 and the later 2.x releases of Firefox, but it's kinda iffy under Fedora Core 9 and Firefox 3. I have a feeling this is one of those issues that will take a little while to get resolved.

14. Barry`s_Lazy_Boy Posted: November 18, 2008 at 03:13 AM (#3011271)

Silverfish will be competitive by 3.0. Like all things MSFT.

15. Long John McCaine Mutiny on the Bounty (scott) Posted: November 18, 2008 at 03:38 AM (#3011286)

what schmott guys!

16. Greg Maddux School of Reflexive Profanity Posted: November 18, 2008 at 04:00 AM (#3011295)

I uninstalled Silverlight by the first commercial break of the first game and spent the rest of the season pulling mms links out of the old player. I hope this doesn't confound my sweet setup.

17. Leroy Kincaid Posted: November 18, 2008 at 04:22 AM (#3011304)

I gave up on Silverlight and the 1.2mb feed pretty quickly, what with how much it sucked and all. I was glad when they finally stopped asking whether I wanted to use Silverlight or WMP everytime I switched to a new game. I opted to go month by month and by the time June rolled around I didn't think it was worth it. But then mlb.com started to re-up me even though I never authorized automatic renewals. 3 months in a row they charged my Visa and each time I successfully disputed it. When they did it again in Sept. my credit card company didn't honor my dispute so I called mlb.com and I was credited $19.95. Not long after that I was credited again. I emailed them and told them they gave me back one month too many. Their repsonse? They credited me all 6 months! I again told them this was an error - to no avail. I guess I shouldn't complain.

18. a bebop a rebop Posted: November 18, 2008 at 04:28 AM (#3011307)

I gave up on Silverlight and the 1.2mb feed pretty quickly, what with how much it sucked and all. I was glad when they finally stopped asking whether I wanted to use Silverlight or WMP everytime I switched to a new game. I opted to go month by month and by the time June rolled around I didn't think it was worth it. But then mlb.com started to re-up me even though I never authorized automatic renewals. 3 months in a row they charged my Visa and each time I successfully disputed it. When they did it again in Sept. my credit card company didn't honor my dispute so I called mlb.com and I was credited $19.95. Not long after that I was credited again. I emailed them and told them they gave me back one month too many. Their repsonse? They credited me all 6 months! I again told them this was an error - to no avail. I guess I shouldn't complain.

I hope you learned your lesson.

19. Jeff K. Posted: November 18, 2008 at 08:22 AM (#3011354)

Reminds me of when I got laid off from the dotcom in '01, and they direct deposited my two months' severance without taking out taxes. I called corporate to let them know. Next day, there was a new deposit for what it should have been, except they didn't take back the original. I emailed, no response. Left it there for 3 or 4 months, then I spent it.

20. Flynn Posted: November 18, 2008 at 02:28 PM (#3011390)

I didn't have too many problems with it but the quality sucked. 800 K was not 800 K.

21. T.J. Posted: November 18, 2008 at 03:06 PM (#3011416)

I guess you could say Silverlight has been the Reverse Flash. It's no Professor Zoom, though.

22. Greg Franklin Posted: November 18, 2008 at 07:22 PM (#3011604)

I had to wiki "Golden Age Turtle" ... he doesn't look too impressive for a villain.

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Tuesday, November 18, 2008

MLB.com drops Silverlight for Adobe Flash

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