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Silverlight Portable

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z25blink
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Silverlight Portable

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I have been asked
in other Forum about how to install Silverlight in portable browsers ...

I found this old Silverlight topic here
, but no real answer was there

https://portableapps.com/node/14188

Recently, is other situation, than time before because

Olympics HD Videos and big TV corporations use SL technology
Silverlight is open-source ... Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL)
Silverlight is widely used now ... Half of all PCs have SL installed

http://www.statowl.com/custom_ria_market_penetration.php
http://www.statowl.com/plugin_overview.php
http://www.statowl.com/silverlight.php

http://riastats.com/#

RIA - Rich Internet Applications (Flash, Java, Silverlight, WMP, QuickTime)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Silverlight
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Wink

John T. Haller
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Not Open Source, OS-tied

Silverlight is not open source or open in any way shape or form and Microsoft has no intention of making it so according to Sam Ramji, director of platform technology strategy at Microsoft.

Use of Silverlight exclusively is *very* rare on websites. It's basically only Netflix for their watch instantly function (because Microsoft owns a big chunk of Netflix and has people on their board) and the Olympics (because Microsoft pays them a huge chunk of cash to only use Silverlight and not Flash or Quicktime). That's really it.

Silverlight's penetration is really poor. It's less than 42% compared to Flash which is ~97%, so no company that wants to market something to the public will use Silverlight (Version 3, which the above sites use for video, has under 30% market penetration). Corporate users can't install it. Most home users are afraid to install it. And the "open source" Moonlight implementation which is not fully Silverlight-compatible is patent-encumbered, not fully open source and can only be distributed by Novell.

So legally, it's really messy. It's really only used on a couple sites that are either owned or paid by Microsoft. And it's heavily tied to the OS itself.

All that said, I'm going to try a crack at a live installer for it. It won't be truly portable (it's gonna leave all kinds of stuff behind), and it may or may not work with 'licensed' content, but for folks who really want it, I'll give it a shot.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

z25blink
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meaning of "Open"

I dont agree. Microsoft didnt have to pay. Silverlight is more advanced platform
(more than flash or quicktime for sure)... only Adobe Air have comparable quality in playback of content and web apps.

40-55 % is poor penetration ? (= hundreds of millions PCs)

Silverlight and Monlight are "open" in the meaning of that word ...(vs. Java, Flash)

Flash is not opensource at all (only freeware proprietary)

Java is fully portable here, and also not opensource
http://www.java.com/en/download/license.jsp

Freeware apps are also here
.... seems to me as open-source hypocrisy

John T. Haller
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Big Difference

For a website supporting a customerbase, you want *BIG* penetration. 42% penetration is basically useless (you're going to turn away 58% of your visitors?). Flash works because it is universal. Everyone has it installed. It's available, in its latest version, for every single platform. That's why YouTube, Hulu, DailyMotion, CNN and everyone else in the world does Flash. Netflix does Silverlight (and had the Xbox 360 exclusivity for a while) because of Microsoft's ownership stake (MS owns 10% of Netflix). The Olympics worldwide uses Flash. The exception is NBC Universal (which Microsoft has a partnership with and a joint venture MSNBC). That's really it in terms of Silverlight.

Hardly anyone else uses Silverlight because of its low penetration level. 42% does mean millions of PCs. But it means 58% of your users can't view your content. Most of them will leave. Corporate users can't install it. Most home users won't. Same thing happened last Olympics when NBC's own stats showed that 1/2 of visitors didn't have Silverlight installed and simply left. That's a really poor customer/user experience and really the only reason to do it is if you are paid a truck load of money to do so.

Silverlight is closed source and ties *heavily* into the OS. Silverlight isn't available for Linux. Linux users' only option is Moonlight, which only Novell can build due to the non-open source agreement with Microsoft, and only supports Silverlight 2.0 stuff and doesn't support it perfectly.

So, Silverlight is far less 'open' than Flash. Flash 10 is available for Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7, Mac OSX, Linux and Solaris (x86 and SPARC). Silverlight doesn't support Windows 2000 (Flash does), doesn't support Mac OSX before 10.4.8 or PowerPC Macs at all (Flash 9 does), doesn't support Linux (Flash does) and doesn't support Solaris (Flash does). And it's already installed on nearly all internet-connected PCs.

Java, of course, is even more open. Nearly the whole thing has been released under the GPL. Several *real* open source implementations exist. And it runs on nearly every platform in existence.

The bottom line is that Silverlight is a very closed system. It would be much worse than Flash for end users if it caught on due to its exclusivity of platforms and other issues. You have a platform provider (which is their cash cow) producing a content delivery system (which they don't really make any money on)... so sooner or later, they're going to play favorites with their own platform.

This isn't about open source vs freeware (since neither Silverlight nor Flash are open source at all). This is more about the way the apps are structured, the reality of the current installbase of each and the probability of funny-business in the future.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

z25blink
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Same thing happened last

Same thing happened last Olympics when NBC's own stats showed that 1/2 of visitors didn't have Silverlight installed and simply left.

maybe dumb people :lol:

Darkbee
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WTG!

Maybe they're smart.

That's like saying people who use DVDs are dumb even though Blu-Ray is superior. DVDs meet my needs just fine and I'd guess that DVDs still have the lions share of the home media market.

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Correct

Blu-Ray is, in fact, failing to achieve the market penetration that Sony expected. This is due to quite a few factors: over-priced compared to DVDs, inconvenient (won't work in your car or laptop), etc. This is one of the reasons that Sony Pictures did layoffs recently: http://themediawonk.com/2010/02/04/alarm-bells-come-too-late-for-sony-pi...

This quote from Sony says it best: "Our analysis also shows that the Blu-Ray format is having a more modest acceptance rate that traditional DVD. In 2009, three years after its introduction, Blu-Ray’s penetration of TV households stood at 4.4%, compared to 13.0% for DVDs in 2000. We also find that Blu-Ray [sic] has seen lower numbers of titles shipped per converted household relative to DVD. We don’t see Blu-Ray stemming the decline of physical sales."

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z25blink
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thats not same situation

Silverlight is better quality for free, while DVDs, as well as Blu-Ray are paid !

.... If someone offer me blue-ray recorder to my old PC for free, I surely want it.

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You Sure?

Recordable BluRay discs cost more than new store-bought DVD movies.

Also, in video quality, Silverlight video is WMV. It's comparable to current flash video (which can be Sorenson, VP6, H.264 or HE-AAC), H.264 and OGG Theora at similar bitrates (though the CPU power to encode and decode will vary more). Most flash video sites use much lower quality feeds due to bandwidth issues. It's not a limitation of Flash or of H.264 or the other formats... it's a limitation of bandwidth. With all of the formats, more bandwidth = better quality.

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z25blink
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yes, sure

It is compatible with multiple web browser products used on Microsoft Windows, Linux (using Novell Moonlight), and Mac OS X operating systems. Mobile devices, starting with Windows Mobile 7 and Symbian (Series 60) phones, will likely become supported in 2010. A free software implementation named Moonlight, developed by Novell in cooperation with Microsoft, is available to bring compatible functionality to Linux, FreeBSD and other open source platforms.

Silverlight supports WMV, WMA and MP3 media content, across all supported browsers without requiring Windows Media Player, the Windows Media Player ActiveX control or Windows Media browser plugins.

(that does not mean Silverlight = WMP)... and other formats of course

price of Blue-Ray is higher than DVDs (of course, much better for small price difference)

price of Flash and Silverlight are zero, So who have problem "to buy it" for free ?

EDIT: Blueray is not so successful because "economic crisis" . If people havent money on food, they can´t watching movies, especially expensive one Sad
If economy works well since 2008 to nowadays, BR would have much better penetration

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Video Quality

I was speaking more to video quality. Silverlight has no real advantage over Flash in terms of quality. The main issue with Flash video is most folks are using either an older codec to create the video or setting the compression too high. In terms of quality for bandwidth, there's no real difference between Flash (with On2 or H.264), OGG Theora, Silverlight and straight H.264.

(Note that I'm not talking about Silverlight apps... which is more comparable to Adobe Air... and an entirely different conversation.)

Moonlight isn't a full option for Linux users for many reasons. It has patent issues and, thus, only Novell is allowed to distribute it. And it only supports Silverlight 2.0 (not 3.0 stable or 4.0 dev) and doesn't fully support it.

As for mobile, having WinMo7 and S60 likely to become supported in 2010 isn't much. WinMo7 will require a new device. The updated S60 with Flash may very well, too. Flash is coming to WebOS in the first half of 2010 and is already being demoed at Mobile World. Flash Lite is available for S60. Flash is coming to most Android devices in 2010 and is already on some shipping devices and has been for months. Flash is on Blackberry, too. Flash Lite has been available for WinMo since version 5 and earlier, but recent reports indicate that Microsoft may be locking Flash out of WinMo 7 (if you can't compete on features and functionality, be anti-competitive and lock your competitor out of your platform).

The bottom line is that Silverlight has no real advantage over Flash and has huge disadvantages (~42% installbase, no true Linux support, etc). The only sites that have picked Silverlight for video over Flash are sites that Microsoft has some control over.

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z25blink
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web videos future

However, Apple wan´t allow Flash on its devices (like iPad) beacuse is buggy, slow, simply un-modern technology. They just look into HTML 5, Ogg Theora, Ogg Vorbis. .... Flash / Silverlight battle to loose both of them, and HTML 5 just win all. Multimedia playback without any plugins needed ! But, not yet in 2010

We all wait for Silverlight + Flash portable "crack" done by You.
Smile

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Yes and No

HTML5 is not going to be the save-all some people tout it as. There is HTML5-H.264 which is supported by Safari and Chrome (9.7% of people online). Then there is HTML5-OggTheora which is supported by Chrome, Firefox and Opera (about 32% of people online). Internet Explorer (62% of people online) supports neither and is unlikely to.

H.264 is more widely supported in hardware and software (iPod/iPad) but is *REALLY* expensive to license (it would cost Mozilla $5,000,000 to support it this year, probably about $6,000,000 next year and growing from there with no limit on the increases per year... plus people streaming H.264 video online will have to pay a per-stream fee starting in 2010 which can be any amount MPEG LA chooses and raise at whatever rate they choose). So Mozilla and Opera will refuse to support H.264 because they can't afford it. Apple and Google are already hitting the yearly max cap for licensing H.264 (Apple for iPod/iTunes, Google for encoding boxes), so it is free for them. Very few of the Linux distros will have the cash to pay out for it either. That's why the HTML5 working group left out the codec when working on HTML5, which basically kills the idea of it becoming a simple standard.

Short answer, you're going to have Flash video for a very long time to come as the defacto 'standard', as it is now. In addition to Flash, some sites will offer HTML5 video, but only on a per-browser basis (you either Support H.264/Safari/Chrome or Theora/Chrome/Opera/Firefox), but none will ONLY offer HTML5 video because they'd be locking out a huge percentage of their userbase.

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H.264 is not paid codec since nowadays

H.264 not paid since nowadays (because of competition with HTML5, Vorbis, Theora)

http://www.betanews.com/article/H264-licensing-body-wont-charge-royaltie...

- charging money was main reason to support open+free Ogg,Ogm in non-IE browsers
- situation of support HTML5 can change after IE 9.0 release (or not)

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Right, $5,000,000, like I said

Right, that article says exactly what I already said. That there is no charge for stream broadcasters right now but there will be starting in 2016 (actually 2015 they say) and no charge for users to view it. But that there *IS* a charge for software that allows the viewer to view it (example: a browser with H.264 support built in). And that the per-unit charge for software decoders has a yearly cap of $5,000,000 currently (which is what Mozilla would have to pay this year). And that that cap is going up next year (probably to around $6,000,000).

This is all well known and documented and HIGHLY unlikely to change. MPEG LA makes their money off those licenses they get from Apple, Google and others. If they give it to Mozilla free, they have to give it to Apple free, and then where do they make their money.

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z25blink
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Is 2015 deadline also for home users ?

, which have some MPEG-4 videos (mostly .MP4) at home ?
(or only for web-streaming videos) ?? ... If so, what should people do ?

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MPEG LA isn't MPEG

MPEG LA isn't the same as MPEG, so this isn't related to MP4 files, only the H.264 codec. And the licensing is only going to be for producers (aka encoders, per-unit), streamers (aka broadcasters, per-stream) and receivers (aka software/hardware players, per-unit). There won't be a per-user fee. And there doesn't appear to be a per-user fee paid at the user's end.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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thanks for enlightment about that

:cool:

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H.323, H.265, and other

What do you think about these ?

H.323 codec, SIP, IM, XMMP, VOIP, Video-conferencing, Video-telephony

And other version of MPEG (High-performance Video Coding) H.265

Will be any future progress about them ?
(widely accepted like Flash) ?

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Not about quality or price

You're missing the point. I didn't mention the DVD/Blu-ray analogy because I'm trying to say that Silverlight is superior to Flash or whatever, or one costs more than the other. I'm looking at it purely from a market-share perspective. What incentive have I to ditch my entire DVD collection in favor of Blu-ray? The answer for me is a big fat zero. None! I couldn't care less if Blu-ray was erased from the history books tomorrow. Ditto for Silverlight.

I also not suggesting that Silverlight deserves to be ignored, simply that Flash works for me. I don't think once have I ever found the need to use Silverlight so why start now?

If Silverlight does the job for you, then great! I just think coming on to the forums insulting people isn't going to win many supporters. Smile

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"works for you" .... :))
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*insert tongue in cheek*

Yep, DVDs are definitely in the "old-things lovers and [antiquities]" category, for sho!

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:)))
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John T. Haller said I'm going

John T. Haller said

I'm going to try a crack at a live installer for it. ,,,,,, but for folks who really want it, I'll give it a shot.

Could you do Flash build too Smile thx

Silverlight 4.0.41108.0 Beta
http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta/
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Browser-Tweak/Microsoft-Silverlight.s...

Flash 10.1.51.66 Beta 2
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/flashplayer10_1_p2...
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/flashplayer10_1_p2...

John T. Haller
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No Betas

We won't be doing betas of either. We're talking usefulness for end users here.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

z25blink
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ok

do a stable builds

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