NBC Did Not "Drop" Silverlight In Favor Of Flash: Bloggers Simply Want Headlines

It's a shame that in our industry, some bloggers are more concerned with writing a headline just for drama sake, as opposed to actually getting the details right. In the past few days, at least half a dozen sites said that NBC was "dropping", "dumping" or "ditching" Silverlight in favor or Flash for streaming of football games on NBCSports and NFL.com. Some also had headlines like "NBC has enough of Silverlight".

Problem is, none of this is true. Did any of these journalists actually speak to anyone at NBC or the NFL? If any of them made a simple inquiry to NBC or the NFL they would have gotten the same response I got which was, "NBC did not drop Silverlight and this was an entirely separate event and partnership. The NFL selected Adobe." And in order to "drop", "dump", or "ditch" something it means you have to be using it first. Since the NFL games had never been broadcast before, how were they using Silverlight in the past? The Olympics has nothing to do with the NFL. And it looks even worse for those who wrote these posts trying to make Silverlight sound bad, but then in the same post said that the NFL video experience with Flash was not very good.

I'm sure some will say who cares, the bottom line is that the NFL selected Flash. Ok, then make the story about that, don't try to make it out to be something it isn't.

Comments

[Ben Homer]

Thanks for making that distinction, it's a solid point. MSM is playing Silverlight and Flash off of each other for what they can get, but they're also not particularly organized.

These companies have so many divisions working on so many different things most of these decisions wind up being made based on a specific project's individual needs. Probably as you speculate MSFT / ADBE are sweetening the pot for the larger deals by offering to front some of the dev costs.

[Tim Siglin]

Well said, Dan. The competition between Microsoft and Adobe will continue, but it'll be a while before a true winner emerges.

In the article on streamingmedia.com, I hope I made the distinction between the NFL choosing versus NBC hosting / providing talent. Also interesting wording that Adobe used in the press release, referring to their content delivery network; I've asked for clarification from Adobe.

[Christopher Levy]

Not only did NBC not drop Silverlight for Flash in the case of Sunday Night Football.... they had nothing to do with the decision. The NFL solely made the decision based on some business factors which are not public and as a result Flash is in play now.

Tim I wouldn't be suprised if Adobe is referring to Stream OS as their Content Delivery Network given their deal with Akamai for Adobe TV [which we have not heard a lot of numbers about or data from lately.]

http://www.akamai.com/html/about/press/releases/2008/press_040908.html

[Joel Unickow]

This is also a part of a bigger problem out there; many bloggers have no journalistic training. These days, there's so many bloggers that you have to really look into their backgrounds before you subscribe to their feed.

[Jerry Braun]

I stream lots of Flash Video. As a user of Flash, I was disgusted at the quality of the NFL Sunday stream. The audio didn't stutter, but the video was horrible. You'd hear "Touchdown!" while the video was frozen on the huddle that went before the play. The event was not (in terms of infrastructure) ready for prime time.

[Mat Rosa]

The Sunday Stream was incredibly bad, which is an ironic testament after all the blogger ballyhoo against Silverlight during the Olympics. Jerry correctly identifies the problem as a question of infrastructure. The NBC/Limelight setup for the Oly's was for the most part spectacular, and it showed in the consistency of the feeds. Most of the bad experience was more a question of streaming older (converted) video.

In the end, it may be a question of "who will win" but in the meantime, both have excellent benefits as well as tremendous drawbacks. We're finding that business-based clients are looking closely at both and trying both out as well. And having both brings better innovation, so maybe it's better if no one wins; better if we just get better product!

[Dan Frommer]

Dan, great point, and hope we weren't causing any confusion at SAI. Never meant to suggest that NBC was dumping Flash -- and don't think that we did -- though many of these posts linked to ours. Have updated our post to make it extra clear.

[ZoetMB]

"This is also a part of a bigger problem out there; many bloggers have no journalistic training. These days, there's so many bloggers that you have to really look into their backgrounds before you subscribe to their feed."

For me, this is the problem with everything across the web - Blogs, Forums, BBS's and even reviews on sites like Amazon. If you don't know the background of the person doing the reviewing, how can you consider what they have to say? And that's aside from all the trolls out there, who seem to get ego gratification in finding fault with everything.

But even among supposedly trained journalists, there is a problem in that they try to ring sensationalism out of anything. Even weather reporting is now usually meant to terrify us instead of informing us.

[Tim Siglin]

I'd agree with you ZoetMB, but I'm hunkered in my basement just now riding out a storm . . . :)

[Mike Nann]

"there is a problem in that they try to ring sensationalism out of anything"

Have to agree, and it's challenging for the subjects of interviews too. The potential of being quoted out of context is not new by any means, but the viral nature of today's blog journalism seems to encourage some things to get "bent" towards the sensational more than ever -- the more sensational the headline, the more likely the story to propagate. You might find the interview you did sounding rather different than you expected and intended it. Something about whether the Internet would "melt" this summer comes to mind...

[Cole]

The bloggers on both sides are wrong. The performance here is not the technology, but the bandwidth and the encoding. The Olympics were using VC-1, which is Microsoft's WMV format. This is a major step down in quality from MPEG-4/h.264, which is what Hollywood and the other networks use for HD. Flash and h.264 is far superior to Silverlight/VC-1. This was one reason why Blu-Ray beat HD-DVD. Same technology battle, so that's not it.

The problem with the broadcast was encoding and capacity. If you broadcast in SD (standard definition) instead of HD (VC-1), SD will always look muddy in comparison. The Olympics had NBC serving up one-fifth the streams they expected they would have. No blips there when you have lots of bandwidth, and a bored server. But NBC was not happy about the lack of traffic, and Silverlight was a big problem with a new, scary download. The NFL got a LOT more traffic than they thought they would, and got overwhelmed.

I've seen plenty of silky smooth Flash h.264 with no studdering. Neither Flash nor Silverlight studder because of their technology. They show what they're given, on the computer hardware you have, on the bandwidth you have, and the bandwidth they have. The talk about technology performance here is completely wrong. Let's put the blame where it truly belongs. Swapping in Silverlight with SD and no bandwidth would produce the exact same thing.

[Tim Acheson]

Users have welcomed the new NFL Silverlight player with very positive feedback. During last night's game Twitter was flooded with messages from viewers. Bizzarely, some American football fans, including the editor of Macworld magazine, sounded more excited about the new Silverlight player than they were about the game:-

http://www.timacheson.com/Blog/2009/sep/macworld_editor_says_silverlight_is_better_than_flash_for_video