Silverlight Versus Flash: Rich Media Platform Comparison Chart

Microsoft will be making a bunch of announcements this week from their MIX event surrounding Silverlight and StreamingMedia.com's Editor Eric is at the event and will be covering the announcements shortly.

From the week of NAB, Microsoft was distributing with its press kit the below chart comparing Silverlight's features and benefits with that of Flash. I have not had a chance to really review them side by side but this is how Microsoft sees their platform stacking up to Flash.

Comments

[Stefan Richter]

ROFL, did MS just denounce Flash video as a non standard format? Did they realize that it is THE de facto video format on the net?
I'm glad Adobe doesn't waste their time compiling silly charts like this one. Any informed customer for a Rich Internet App will not rely on such gimmicks and research both technologuies properly - in which case it will become clear that this chart right here is a load of nonsense.
I've ranted about this here:
http://www.flashcomguru.com/index.cfm/2007/4/24/Silverlight-Flash-They-are-both-as-bad-as-each-other

[Christopher Levy]

Ahem...well I think it's a big stretch to call Flash the "de-facto video format on the net."

For free advertising supported websites such as Google and Youtube I would agree.

For Media of higher value, secure media, just about every pay-media site in existence other than iTunes etc etc WMV is clearly the market leader.

[P.S. I think in sentence 2 you meant to say "threat" not "thread" although it may be a thread as well. :) ]

[Dan Rayburn]

It may be wordsmithing, but "standards" and "formats" are different things. Yes, Flash may be the most popular "format" today, but Flash video is not based off of any "standards", as defined by SMPTE or any other group like them.

When it comes to selecting the right format(s) its about picking the right one(s) based on the content, the users and the device you are delivering it to. No one can say one format is better than another unless you are talking specifics.

[Edward Apostol]

Hi -

In my continuing research and development of Flash and video related technologies, as well as exploring others such as Microsoft, I would have to say that Microsoft unfortunately will not get a foothold on the Rich Internet Application / video arena for many years. I think if you are seriously considering these technologies, you have take the initial marketing information with a grain of salt, and actually evaluate the product one on one in certain conditions.

If anyone is going to go for a SilverLight application today they will be installing a proprietary plug-in from Microsoft. Granted, Adobe/Macromedia does the same with the Flash Player. It will take years before Silverlight has any meaningful market penetration, even with Windows dominance. I suspect at least four years, minimum. Historically, it took the Flash Player a couple of revisions (I think it was "popular", i.e. more than 80% plus penetration) by version 4. Microsoft may get some immediate inroads through Microsoft update, but other than that it will be challenging.

Another issue with Microsoft is that they have tried this before - they acquired a product in the mid nineties called Liquid Motion Pro, a product very similar to Flash 3 at the time. The product failed to gain traction, and I don't think anyone had used it since. Mind you, I used Liquid Motion Pro prior to its acquisition by Microsoft, and it was a good product before then. But Microsoft's history does not reflect success.

There are some drawbacks with the SilverLight Player itself. My exploration has indicated that it does not truly "stream" or execute content, video or otherwise. As Silverlight uses XML, it must be parsed and rendered and then bound into the JavaScript runtime, which takes time. Furthermore, being bound to JavaScript itself has issues of course with basic browser compatability. I was looking at an example from the Channel-9 (the Microsoft developer blog's) website and it took a significantly long time for it to playback, compared to relatively similar Flash-based application.

Comparing XAML to Flex 2 development times, talking with vendor neutral developers, the tendency to jump to Flex 2 is (informally) almost 3 to 1 because of the ability for applications to run cross-platform.

These are just some of my initial investigations. Things are getting mighty interesting, that's for sure.

[Christopher Levy]

Edward,

Somebody sounds scared. You should have gone to MIX in Vegas this week. Silverlight is going to do quite well and yes it does stream natively.

Christopher

[Dom Robinson]

VC-1 is a SMPTE standard. The new DVD formats, the new Set Top Boxes, new hard disc VCRs, Network Storage systems and Servers and live transmission kit is all now absorbing VC-1 as a Video Technology.

Flash is popular, although while magazine and hype authors are passionate about ANYTHING that works simply on a Mac!!, there are still many times as many windows Media (WMA / WM9 and VC1) Decoders out there in all devices (MAC/ MP3 players / phones/ TV / STB DVD-ROm etc) than browsers with flash installed. Trying to license flash for a device starts with 'which browser' - Its a LOOOONG way from being a broadcast engineering standard.

Flash and Silverlight are in effect simply interfaces to the video archive and transmission CoDec.

Flatly in due course Flash will play VC-1, and Silverlight may option in some of the flash coding (if it improves in quality IMO).

As for uptake client of mine deliver many 100s of millions of live and on demand streams in Windows Media each month - it may not be 50m (Youtube videos) a day, but its certainly no indicator to me that everyone is stuck on Youtube.

[Edward Apostol]

I don't think there is anything to be scared about. I think its quite healthy that Microsoft recognizes that Adobe has a good thing going with Flash, Video and Flex. I had a number of peers at the MIX event, and in spite of the obvious MS Hype, they've still responded with mixed results. I even sat in a number of presentations on what was or is the Windows Presentation Layer for Everyone at a number of MS presentations, and have dabbled a little bit in it, but really, at the moment, the penetration is still not markedly there for MS.

And of course people can go back and forth with arguments for and against this or that "yes it does it have streaming", well I can also say that Flash Media Server, which deploys Flash video, supports the featureset that the marketing chart in the article above says it does not. For every client you say supports Windows Media, I can counter with a large client that has abandoned Windows Media in favor of Flash Video, so there is going to be a market adjustment for some time as these two companies battle it out. Take advantage of it!

[Erik]

Rich Media Platform Comparison? Ha, thanks for the laugh.

[jappy45]

hey Guys, Talking about Silverlight? Then let me show you some thing which is powered by silverlight "visifire" an amazing charting component offered under open source for free and now even supports silverlight 2 Beta 2

[nina7683]

i know Moyea flash video server,it provides services of streaming Flash videos and audios between the server side and client side.

http://www.flvsoft.com/

[Terence Tsang]

Thanks for the comparison.

I think you may be interested in my blog which compares Silverlight and Flash with real examples.

[aenables]

flvtovideoconverter:
http://www.flv-to-video.com

[K.]

This is not 100% true.
Take a look at http://silverlight.net/forums/t/3015.aspx to see the REAL comparison.