silverlight the evil

I said on the BT forum (when bt sports discussed) that silverlight is aweful for streaming, this article confirms that.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/159960-netflix-...

seems netflix are moving to html5 but currently only on IE11 on windows 8.1. Hopefully will spread to other browsers as well as the win7 version of IE11. I am guessing will never be in IE10 and IE9.

Will BT sport and sky consider html5. As it seems if netflix are using it then DRM is possible on it.

Edited by Chrysalis (Fri 09-Aug-13 12:39:02)

Isn't the main problem with Silverlight the lack of native support in the GPU which means the CPU has to bear the brunt of the grunt work?

Edited by gomezz (Fri 09-Aug-13 14:19:40)

I installed Silverlight on 1 of my XP PCs to satisfy some package. I wish I can remember why. I want to uninstall it.

I don't have any issues with it. CPU usage goes up a tad but playback works fine still.

I consider silverlight just broken.

The toggle for gpu acceleration in the silverlight gui doesnt do anything, so its generally left on.

with gpu acceleration on the gpu (at leats my gpu) saturates and cant handle sky go. It runs at about 5fps at full screen, thanfully sky allow to go to software mode and in that mode it uses about 3% cpu with no issues.

All other sites dont supply a toggle tho and gpu is forced on, on netfdlix if I use the latest version of silverlight I cant get smooth performance full screen, I have to use an old insecure version. BT sport plays ok but that uses a very low bitrate so may be something to do with it.

So to me the issues are a broken gpu implentation and broken gpu on/off toggle. But these content providers need to get away from silverlight as microsoft have ditched it themselves. So they using a dead platform now to deliver their content. As it seems DRM is of upmost importance above all else. But this breakthrough it seems some kind of DRM extensions have been developed for html5 which is why they now have it working on IE11.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I have to use an old insecure version.

Sorry for bumping an old post, what version did you go back to?

There's some here http://www.oldversion.com/windows/silverlight/

the first 5.0 version.

4.0 is much better but most sites now enforce 5.x.

After that resist all silverlight updates in windows update.

Thanks Chrysalis, I'll pass that on to my friend who is having the same problem.

Thanks also to Batboy for the useful link.