It’s been a busy few months getting ready for NAB and a lot of people within our development, marketing and business teams have been very busy. I am glad to see it all coming together. In case you missed the news we announced several key things today at NAB.

First - Our efforts with Move Networks continue where we are showing some of the integration work we have been working on together. We demonstrated the best of Move’s network delivery with the best of Silverlight’s user experience allowing rich interaction between the two and overlay video and silverlight content on top of HD video. This is the first step in a great partnership between the two companies and important as we continue to extend and enhance our platform to be the best delivery and user experience platform for online content delivery.

Second - We announced PlayReady support for Silverlight and broad industry support from companies like Netflix and Paramount Pictures. Microsoft has a long history of 10+ years with DRM technologies and broad adoption of it’s current DRM platform throughout the industry. Today we announced that we are tightly integrating the next generation of our DRM platform called “PlayReady” into Silverlight. In case you also missed it, Widevine also announced the ability to integrate thier DRM system as another option for content protection into Silverlight and BuyDRM announced support for handling large scale DRM transactions supporting Silverlight. There are several reasons why this is important to note. Silverlight is a development platform, it’s not just a media player trying to be a development platform. I know I keep saying this, but we have engineered it to scale and to allow the mass army of developers building rich applications to extend support for Silverlight.

Third - We announced key partnerships that extend the worldwide adoption of Silverlight. Yahoo! JAPAN, Tencent, M-Net, iTV, Terra Networks, to name a few. This broad support continues to demonstrate our commitment to localize the runtime and provide rich cross platform support across the globe. It’s important to note because the success of Silverlight is not just driven by US adoption, but our focus worldwide. Just as Yahoo! Japan has broad user adoption in Japan, Tencent is China’s largest Internet portal, with more than 300 million unique viewers, and announced it is developing a series of Silverlight-based next-generation Internet services and media experiences. Terra Networks is using Silverlight as the platform for the new HD Channel on Terra TV, its online video and TV platform with service in 18 countries in Latin America and United States reaching millions of subscribers around the world.

So overall a busy day for all of us, and our partners and another day of growing our install base for Silverlight.

For more news you can check out the following news stories:

NAB Roundup Day 1
http://newteevee.com/2008/04/14/nab-roundup-day-1/

Microsoft Touts New Content Partners, DRM For Silverlight
http://www.dbtechno.com/internet/2008/04/14/microsoft-touts-new-content-partners-drm-for-silverlight/

Yahoo Japan to use Microsoft Silverlight technology
http://stuff.techwhack.com/3443-yahoo-japan

Microsoft Continues Silverlight Push
http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Microsoft_Continues_Silverlight_Push_16363.html

Microsoft’s Silverlight Gaining Ground - and DRM
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/62582.html?welcome=1208218218

More money pouring into rich media; Move Networks adds more funding
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=816

Move Raises $46M
http://newteevee.com/2008/04/14/move-networks-raises-46m/

Widevine and Microsoft team up for DRM on Silverlight
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=814

Microsoft, Silverlight and Widevine
http://opinion.latimes.com/bitplayer/2008/04/microsoft-silve.html

Microsoft Silverlight and SOA
Colin Harrington - http://colinharrington.net/blog

Silverlight is gaining ground with Content Companies Worldwide
Desinformado.com Technology… - http://www.desinformado.com

Microsoft, Silverlight and Widevine
AFI BLOG: Media and Technology - http://blog.afi.com/tech

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Silverlight Community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.