Thursday 1 December 2011

Lovefilm dumps Flash and switches to Sliverlight for streaming

From next year, Lovefilm are switching from Flash to Sliverlight for their streaming service. Why? Because the Movie Studios demanded it:

We’ve been asked to make this change by the Studios who provide us with the films in the first place, because they’re insisting – understandably – that we use robust security to protect their films from piracy, and they see the Silverlight software as more secure than Flash.

Simply put: without meeting their requirements, we’d suddenly have next-to-no films to stream online.
While this news won't be greeted with applause by everyone (especially users Linux/UNIX systems, who are not happy with Lovefilm right now), there is one plus: The possiblity of quality improvements for Lovefilm's streams:
Silverlight contains a technology called Smooth Streaming, which automatically adjusts the quality of the video stream to the best level for your internet connection. This reduces buffering for customers on a low broadband speed, but then improves the streaming quality when broadband speed increases.


No comments:

Post a Comment