14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s alternative to Adobe Flash has “qualified” for yet another edition of the Olympic Games, after being positioned at the core of NBC’s online coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The third major version of Silverlight will be critical to kicking up a notch the web-based user experience associated with the XXI Olympic Winter Games scheduled to debut on February 12th, 2010 in Vancouver Canada. Silverlight 3 and the Smooth Streaming technology will be responsible for delivering both live and on-demand HD coverage of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. In fact, last week, NBC launched the new interactive Silverlight player on NBCOlympics.com, while also kicking off the 100-day count down to the gaming events in Canada.
Users that turned to NBC and Microsoft in order to access content from the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games already know what to expect. However, Silverlight 3 guarantees that the UX will be superior to what Silverlight 2 brought to the table. Simply because the technology itself evolved since 2008.
"In addition to live and on-demand coverage of the events, we’ve added some new interactive features such as: Full PVR-like functionality with fast forward, rewind and slow motion capabilities, as well as the ability to join a live stream after it has started. Enhanced play-by-play functionality to easily jump the video to key moments like a goal being scored in hockey or a world-record breaking split time in skiing. A Microsoft Silverlight Deep Zoom slide show viewing experience that provides a quick and easy way to browse, view, and zoom into entire photo collections, developed by Vertigo,” Microsoft noted.
Video made available via NBCOlympics.com will be offered both live and on-demand at HD (720p) through Silverlight and Live Smooth Streaming. And it will be via Silverlight that Microsoft will deliver DVR-style controls, as well as enhanced navigation options. Silverlight content will not be limited to video, as additional materials will also include photos with "deep zoom" functionality.
However, Microsoft and NBC are not alone in bringing XXI Olympic Winter Games to users across the web. Here is a list of partners that also contribute to the duo’s efforts:
“•The raw video feeds come from Vancouver through NBC’s facilities in New York City onward to iStreamPlanet’s facilities in Las Vegas. •Inlet’s Spinnaker technology encodes the feeds into Live Smooth Streaming formats using encoders into 6 different bitrates for each stream. •Akamai servers pick up the encoded Live Smooth Streaming files from Microsoft-hosted Windows Servers, and use the Akamai HD Network to deliver and cache the content around the network. •Viewers watch content through the Silverlight-based media player, designed and developed by Vertigo, which reads and integrates a data feed from Deltatre that contains all of the play-by-play information, schedules, results and other Olympics-related statistical information. •Monitoring software from Conviva ensures an alert is sent to NBC and Microsoft if there are any problems with the streams so the problem can be corrected immediately.”
Silverlight 3 RTW is available for download here.