Silverlight 3 beta with H.264 support available

[Dark Shikari]

do you have any info on whether MS has decided to integrate h264 or theora in IE9? The other browser vendors have already decided but there doesn't seem to be any information on the internet of what MS has decided to do, with a 60% browser share and plenty of money to pay for h264 licensing costs, especially with windows7 already having h264 support in WMP11. Or maybe you could pass on my query to a colleague from a relevant department.

If MS does decide to integrate h264 in IE9 and h264 becomes a standard in a future HTML standard then i presume silverlight will still carry on as h264 wont have gpu decoding support or anything i PRESUME?Microsoft will probably just use DirectShow and Media Foundation, no need to be retarded and integrate decoders into the browser.

[Razorholt]

@ben: yes, the experience is better. Have you guys disabled the hardware decoding?

[hajj_3]

will that work on WinXP though dark shikari? as only windows7 has h264 support in WMP11. what would happen with licensing as ms will be paying mpeg group alot of $$ for h264 support in WMP11 on Win7. All ms needs to do is to tell everyone h264 support will be in IE9 and donate mozilla some $ and then everyone can use h264 for HTML5, opera has such a small market share but ms could donate them some $$ too. Apple would benefit too as the iphone could play videos from sites smoothly. without funding for mozilla h264 will never kick off, they have a big browser market share now but dont operate to make money so can't pay h264 fees. Would be a nice gesture for MS to pay some money, it would probably reduce their chance of the EU suing them again by seeing them donate to a competitor for the good of technological industry improvements.

p.s you should rename this topic now as silverlight3 isn't beta anymore:)

[benwaggoner]

do you have any info on whether MS has decided to integrate h264 or theora in IE9?
IE8 came out pretty recently. I haven't talked with anyone on the IE team about this personally, but I doubt they've locked-down the final feature list for IE9 yet.

...then i presume silverlight will still carry on as h264 wont have gpu decoding support or anything i PRESUME?
I don't know why you'd make that presumption. We've been all software so far because that's what the hardware in the market could best support, but we make our choices about that kind of thing pragmatically.

[benwaggoner]

@ben: yes, the experience is better. Have you guys disabled the hardware decoding?
It's off by default, because GPU acceleration can actually cause a performance regression with some kinds of apps that use a whole lot of layers.

It's a no-brainer for media players, though, and the "base player" we distribute for people to use as a starting point does default to GPU being on.

But existing players will need to be upated to take advantage of it.

[CruNcher]

so benwaggoner according to what you say GPU Decoding for Silverlight is stalling @ the moment so i presume Adobe and Nvidia will be first that gonna present this early next year ?
And alot later Microsoft ? and how about using Shed Devices say Quartics chip to decode Silverlight Video Online content ?
Will there be a unique secure interface for all Devices or individual ones ? (XP,Vista(Win7))
I mean if you will realize it over Media Foundation it will be Vista and Win7 only but what is with XP ? or do you actually have no plans for XP anymore with in Browser Content GPU Decoding as the whole GPU ecosystem (Scheduling,Managing,Interfaces support) was introduced with Vista ?

A XP solution for this sounds like extra effort from Microsoft side and i fear you gonna skip this and maybe Adobe & Nvidia also :(

[benwaggoner]

so benwaggoner according to what you say GPU Decoding for Silverlight is stalling @ the moment so i presume Adobe and Nvidia will be first that gonna present this early next year ?
Silverlight 3, which launched today, uses the GPU for compositing and scaling, but not for decoding.

I don't know Adobe's schedule, so I'm not going to speculate as to whether Flash 11 or Silverlight 4 makes it to market first. And I'm certainly not going to start announcing features for it yet :). We need you guys to tell us how Silverlight 3 is first.

[hajj_3]

I seemed to be offered a hotfix for silverlight today on XP and on Win7x64, it is several mb, about the same size as the full installer, what is fixed in this hotfix? Will i be able to download the NEW full installer so i dont have to install silverlight 3 and then the hotfix each time I format my pc?

thanks.

[benwaggoner]

I seemed to be offered a hotfix for silverlight today on XP and on Win7x64, it is several mb, about the same size as the full installer, what is fixed in this hotfix? Will i be able to download the NEW full installer so i dont have to install silverlight 3 and then the hotfix each time I format my pc?

It's a new full installer, not a delta update. We only offer the current version for download from the main site at any given time. Developers have access to old builds, but we make sure users only get the current version of the moment.

We did several minor updates like this for Silverlight 1.0 and 2 as well, without any issue.

[hajj_3]

ok cool:) Wish you did that with some of your other products like .NET 1.1, .NET 3.5 etc:( Or atleast have a seperate link for new full installers for advanced users as i have several pc's and reformat and change installations every few months, after installing .net 1.1 or 3.5 i have to download some pretty large updates off windows update, i'm not saying make the new full installers the default as they may conflict with visual studio and software houses' applications but there should be an option for a new full installer. Its like with Adobe reader, unfortunately you have to download adobe reader 9.10 and then have to update to 9.13 with the updater, i'd rather just download a new full installer of 9.13

Is there a changelog available, can't see 1 on your site, would be handy to add a changelog for changes between each public build. New silverlight and new flash on the same day = :) flash's changelog was around 10 security hole fixes.

p.s you still need to change this topic from: "Silverlight 3 beta with H.264 support available" to: "Silverlight 3 with H.264 support available"

[benwaggoner]

ok cool:) Wish you did that with some of your other products like .NET 1.1, .NET 3.5 etc:( Or atleast have a seperate link for new full installers for advanced users as i have several pc's and reformat and change installations every few months, after installing .net 1.1 or 3.5 i have to download some pretty large updates off windows update, i'm not saying make the new full installers the default as they may conflict with visual studio and software houses' applications but there should be an option for a new full installer. Its like with Adobe reader, unfortunately you have to download adobe reader 9.10 and then have to update to 9.13 with the updater, i'd rather just download a new full installer of 9.13
Yeah, servicing is a big deal and tricky to manage. I know the .NET guys are trying to make this easier. But there's another plus to Win 7 there for you :).

We have it easy with Silverlight since we don't have any OS dependencies and the OS doesn't have dependencies on Silverlight, so we can be basically one big library that gets updated wholesale.

Is there a changelog available, can't see 1 on your site, would be handy to add a changelog for changes between each public build. New silverlight and new flash on the same day = :) flash's changelog was around 10 security hole fixes.
There's this.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1b7a3205-b5f8-4e20-bf42-792de5923454&displaylang=en&tm

I do not know why it's a download of an .html file instead of a web page. It hasn't been updated for the new release yet, though.

But I'm MUCH happier to have a fix for media performance than security reasons. Knock on wood, but we haven't had to do a single security patch for Silverlight so far.

[hajj_3]

maybe you could have a link on microsoft.com/silverlight and silverlight.net to the changelog as i looked on both and couldn't find the changelog.

EDIT: just noticed you said the changelog hasn't been updated on that link yet. Seems a shame to have the changelog not updated and no changelog links on the 2 official silverlight sites on the day of release:(

[popper]

ben, given the consumers have just been offered places from the 20th of last month for the Signup to the Xbox LIVE Update Preview Program http://majornelson.com/archive/2009/07/20/xbox-360-system-update-preview-program.aspx

is there a list somewere with all the additions and updates they intend adding to this latest firmware,we dont get that many firmware updates so its important right now with all the below going on dont you think ?, is there ANY real [streaming] video related things going into this new firmware?

id hope they are giving [HD]video streaming content and updated codecs/containers a high priority this time around, given the current silverlight3 release, new Smooth Streaming technology coming into play http://www.cmstreamservice.com/

http://blog.cmstream.net/

AND the new "Play To" feature in Windows 7 http://on10.net/blogs/nic/Windows-7-Play-To-feature-turns-your-PC-into-a-Universal-Remote-Control/

all coming to a head real soon now, i fear its not though, as the left hand dont seem to know what the right hands doing over at MS labs right now..

if you have time, perhaps you can nip over there and point out the obvious, that we NEED new faster altivec optimised AVC codecs and containers (and a 360 browser [+IPv6 stack] for multicast use etc ;) ) and a Smooth Streaming segmentor so we can stream and perhaps even use the idle 360 for this and many other video related tasks if we are given the tools to do so inside the firmware....

[benwaggoner]

ben, given the consumers have just been offered places from the 20th of last month for the Signup to the Xbox LIVE Update Preview Program http://majornelson.com/archive/2009/07/20/xbox-360-system-update-preview-program.aspx

is there a list somewere with all the additions and updates they intend adding to this latest firmware,we dont get that many firmware updates so its important right now with all the below going on dont you think ?, is there ANY real [streaming] video related things going into this new firmware?
There is the big 1080p streaming update coming soon, but I'm not sure if that's in this firmware or not.

Honestly, with the launched of Silverlight and Expression Encoder 3, plus finishing my book, I've been completely out of the loop on the new Xbox 360 firmware. I know some stuff about the 1080p video service, but that's about it.

id hope they are giving [HD]video streaming content and updated codecs/containers a high priority this time around, given the current silverlight3 release, new Smooth Streaming technology coming into play http://www.cmstreamservice.com/
The codec support as of the 2007 update handles everything we're doing in Smooth Streaming and more, honestly.

AND the new "Play To" feature in Windows 7 http://on10.net/blogs/nic/Windows-7-Play-To-feature-turns-your-PC-into-a-Universal-Remote-Control/
That should work just fine with the 360; IIRC it'll support any extender based on its declared compatibility.

I haven't tried with MKV yet, but I think it should work...

all coming to a head real soon now, i fear its not though, as the left hand dont seem to know what the right hands doing over at MS labs right now..
Which lab? We have so many :).

Really, there's a ton of internal collaboration. A lot of Xbox/Zune work made it into Expression Encoder 3, Silverlight has been shown on the 360, etcetera. But in the end different businesses make releases on their own schedule, focusing on what's critical for them.

if you have time, perhaps you can nip over there and point out the obvious, that we NEED new faster altivec optimised AVC codecs and containers (and a 360 browser [+IPv6 stack] for multicast use etc ;) ) and a Smooth Streaming segmentor so we can stream and perhaps even use the idle 360 for this and many other video related tasks if we are given the tools to do so inside the firmware....
Do you have some samples of AVC files that should work but don't?

No idea about a browser. I'm not really sure how much sense that makes for a console that generally won't even have a keyboard. The PS3 brower has been a PITA every time I tried to use it. "Brower" implies so much else in terms of plugin support etcetera that it's hard to imagine anyong being happy with a basic one.

What do you mean by "Smooth Streaming segmentor?"

In the end, the 360 is meant as a game console first, with a lot of other content consumption features. The team is really focused on making the experience better and deeper in the core areas, and pretty dilligent about not getting distracted by potentially cool things that wouldn't make a positive impact on console, game, and Live subscription sales.

If you want a highly programmable platform, you've got Windows :).

[hajj_3]

It has just been announced that a linux 64bit version of chrome beta is out and that 64bit versions of chrome for mac osx and windows will be out soon. Will you now start development on 64bit silverlight for windows, mac osx and linux?

source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/64-bit-Google-Chrome-for-Windows-Soon-120286.shtml

If 64bit firefox, chrome, safari, silverlight, flash came out within the next 12 months do you know if MS will make 64bit IE the default version in Vista & Windows 7 with future service packs?

p.s please remove "beta" from the topic title as silverlight 3 is no longer beta.

[Razorholt]

@ben: it would be helpful if people who installed the beta version of S3 would at least get noticed about the (final) public release.

Cheers,
- Dan

[Kurtnoise]

@ben: it would be helpful if people who installed the beta version of S3 would at least get noticed about the (final) public release.

iirc, you receive a notification from windows update...

[Razorholt]

iirc, you receive a notification from windows update...
If you have installed the Silverlight Developer version (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=143433) you won't receive any updates. What you'll need to do is to uninstall it first and THEN install the current version.

[hajj_3]

has the silverlight team made a decision on a 64bit version for 64bit IE/Chrome?

[hajj_3]

whats the changelog for: Silverlight 3.0.40818 previous version i've had for around 6 weeks was: Silverlight 3.0.40723

[Kurtnoise]

@Ben: http://directshow4sl.codeplex.com/

Maybe it deserves an entry in your blog ?

:)

[benwaggoner]

Well, that's a pile of awesome! I didn't even know about it.

[hajj_3]

no news on silverlight 4 beta (non sdk)? any 64bit versions being developed? linux support? please remove beta tag from this thread as v3 went final many months ago.

[ForceX]

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/01/why-microsoft-isnt-working-on-silverlight-64-bit.ars

[hajj_3]

that sucks:( Chrome 64bit will be out soon, you'd have thought that would be enough incentive to release a 64bit silverlight, aswell as 64bit IE6-8 that have been out for 6yrs. Adobe has already stated 64bit flash is coming after flash 10.1. MS just posted huge Q1 profits yet they can spend a small amount on a 64bit silverlight :(

[lnatan25]

Adobe has been stating that "64-bit Windows Flash is just around the corner" for years now. First it was for 9, then after 9, then for 10, then 10.1, now after 10.1. :rolleyes:

[Kurtnoise]

no news on silverlight 4 beta (non sdk)? any 64bit versions being developed? linux support?
will be in Silverlight 5 (http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/future/)...

[hajj_3]

yep :)