Zachmann.NET
Can Silverlight Compete?
Microsoft and NBC are betting very big on using Silverlight to change -- permanently -- the way TV broadcasting is done.
Slogging through the code-development trenches, it's all too easy to lose sight of the larger context in which we work. The world is littered with capable and talented developers working hard for little money because their skills are only marginally relevant in today's market. We need to step back occasionally and look at the big picture to see where the world is going. The NBC Olympics site (
nbcolympics.com
) is a good place to start.
As reported in the cover story of the last issue of RDN, Silverlight is front and center of NBC's coverage of the Olympics in Beijing, which began in earnest last week. As the cover story pointed out, NBC is providing interactive access to live, real-time and on-demand streamed video content from its Olympics Web site, putting Silverlight to the ultimate test.
Growing Stage
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates first detailed Silverlight's role at the Beijing Olympics back in January during his keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Gates said that NBC chose Microsoft and MSN as its exclusive U.S. partner for online video footage of the games, where 3,600 hours of events would be made available on-demand, allowing individuals to customize their views and receive alerts.
Recalling its role with last summer's Live Earth concerts, Gates said of Silverlight's Olympic role: "It's going to let us illustrate why TV is going to be very different. Events like this in the broadcast format just aren't as satisfying -- not as great as we'll be able to make the Olympics."
Just how well all this works -- or doesn't -- will have enormous impact on the future of TV, on acceptance and use of Microsoft's Silverlight technology, and on what we will do in the future as developers. Microsoft and NBC are betting very big on using Silverlight to change -- permanently -- the way TV broadcasting is done.
Just how broad Microsoft's ambitions are in this arena has received little attention so far. But Microsoft made clear just how dead serious it is about all this by its large footprint at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show, also in Las Vegas, in April. Microsoft spent a lot of money to get before broadcasters to announce Silverlight adoption by MSG Interactive, Tencent, Abertis Telecom, Terra Networks and Yahoo! Japan.
Breaking Broadcast
The common theme behind all this is an extremely bold and ambitious effort by Microsoft to supplant traditional TV video-distribution with a Web-based alternative model built on Silverlight. The essential idea is to offer everything currently available from your local cable company and much more -- not via channels on a traditional TV tuner but directly through a Web or Xbox game interface. If Microsoft succeeds in this effort, just who makes money and how they make it in TV distribution will change dramatically over the next few years.
Look at the companies included in the NAB announcement and you'll notice that Microsoft's strategy is a global one. Redmond is quietly building a parallel global system for video-content delivery that could reduce the current cable companies and their phone company imitators to the role of mere Internet service providers with no special advantage regarding content delivery.
The cable and telephone companies will undoubtedly lobby Congress to protect them with regulation. They're unlikely to succeed, however, because there are obviously other powerful economic interests that will lobby just as hard to oppose any such technologically backward regulation. Producers of video content, including the major studios and networks, have much to gain from the disintermediation of the cable and phone companies in video and movie distribution.
The nascent transition has a lot in common with the process already underway with audio content, via the likes of iTunes and Zune. The major difference: Unlike audio -- where Microsoft's Zune remains a distant also-ran to Apple's iTunes -- Silverlight has a very good chance to be the market-leading change-maker.
All of which makes watching the 2008 Olympics especially interesting, not only for the sports events themselves, but to see how well Microsoft's flagship video-distribution technology fares under the acid test of millions of viewers. Serious problems could be a major setback for Microsoft's plan. But if the effort succeeds, it will give Microsoft an enormous boost and set in motion forces that will dramatically change video distribution forever.
It will also be interesting for developers, who will get a close-up look at what can be done with Silverlight, so they can assess how much effort should go into mastering and using the technology.
About the Author
William F. Zachmann, born before the modern digital computer was invented, has lived with them (and made his living off of them) all his life. He was director of research for The Forum Corp. in the mid-'70s and senior vice president of corporate research at International Data Corp. (IDC) in the '80s. He has a copy of Windows 1.0 that Bill Gates signed for him the night it was rolled out at Comdex Fall '85. Zachmann is now director of Canopus Research Inc. He programs in C# using Visual Studio 2005 with a focus on ASP.NET and SQL Server 2005.