Saw this yesterday.
Silverlight is designed for delivery of cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences inside a Web browser. It is expected that Netflix members who watch movies and TV episodes instantly on their computers will enjoy a faster, easier connection and a more robust viewing experience with Silverlight, due to the quality built directly into the player. Among the viewing enhancements with the new player is a breakthrough in timeline navigation that vastly improves the use of fast-forwarding and rewinding. The new Netflix player takes advantage of PlayReady DRM, which is built into Silverlight, for the playback of protected content on both Windows-based PCs and on Macs. That had not been possible with previous generation technologies.
Honesly, at this point, does anybody care?
I tried using Silverlight during the Olympics like most of you did I’m sure. And it was a poor experience. I’m sure a big part of that was because of NBC and the Olympic commitee, but it was still a poor experience.
I’m no DRM expert, but why can’t they do it like Hulu? Hulu offers movies that play in a flash player. Is piracy so bad they the studios are concerned someone will steal the stream? Or somehow get access to the server where the files are located and download them? Honestly?
I can get my music DRM free from Amazon. How much longer until I get big label video content the same way?
I’m not currently a netflix subscriber. Cuts had to be made. This isn’t anything that is going to make me jump back to being a customer any sooner, if at all.
Television. Idiot Box. TV. Attention whore electronic box that lives in most of our living rooms. And I never watch it.
Why have cable
A few years ago I decided not to waste money by having a land line phone and a cell phone at the same time. It was forward thinking when I did it, and now it’s all the rage. I mean really, how many of you have land line telephone service from your local telco? I do mean phone service, not a line that is there for your DSL connection. If you are younger than me, I’m going to say none of you. If you are older, I would say there is a higher chance, but not by much.
Looking again to save a few bucks, I’m thinking about turning off the television part of my Fios service. Honestly I only watch a few shows and seems like a waste to be paying Verizon $45 a month for 8 hours of programming. Then I saw this (via) and realized I wasn’t the only one.
But I have a really nice setup. 45″ HD TV. Full Dolby Surround (with 100w 12″ sub to rattle the walls). To keep that from going to waste, I’m seriously thinking about getting an Apple TV. I’ll buy the shows I want (in HD no less, or whatever the iTunes version of it is) and watch them when I want. I already have a pretty good DVD player for movies and I’m very comfortable using Handbrake for, um, any other programming I might come across, that I want to watch on the big screen.
Plus there is Hulu for when I want to watch Burn Notice, Carrier (which I highly recommend) or anything else that might strike my fancy.
Then, if I still need to be entertained, I can always cruise through Viddler, Vimeo and even YouTube. The way I see it, I don’t need cable.
Has anyone else thought about canceling your cable TV? Or have you actually canceled it? Let us know.
