Lovefilm dumps Flash, BLINDS Linux fans with Silverlight

Silverlight hasn't been dumped.

The desktop and web versions will not evolve further. Silverlight will however, continue to evolve on Windows Phone. Support for the desktop/web version will come to an end - I haven't seen a roadmap for that, but I suspect it'll be the usual 5 years or so.

Why? because Microsoft probably implements some sort of security or DRM that stops people streaming the video straight to the hard disk using 3rd party tools.

People have moaned about Apple and others selling DRM-laden media but this shows that it's often the choice between selling something or nothing at all. The media companies are leaning on the vendors and streamers to secure the media.

Wikipedia says...

Wikipedia says that Windows has 87% market share at the moment,

So if there are 2000000 love film users that means that 1740000 of them are running windows some of the remainder will be using PS3 etc and the rest running Linux/Mac.

Now remember that Love Film is a business, it exists to make money.

Is the best way to do this to devote a huge amount of resource on developing HTML5 (esp given that others are activly doing this)?

No.

Is the best way to do this to stick with flash and end up with no content to stream?

No.

Is the best way to move to the next best technology which is available and will work for 87% of your users...

Probably.

The fact is that MS have not said either way that they are scrapping SL, from what I have read it is supported in Win8 so will need to be supported until it comes to the end of its life (so at least 5 years) that give LF some time to play with a long term strategy for content delivery, whilst maintaining some content in the mean time.

I guess that Netfix etc are being given the same deal by the Content Providers, It will be interesting to see how they react.

Finally, What happened to moonlight?

Um...

...you DID read the bit about the strong rumours that MS may be about to dump Silverlight, didn't you?

Perhaps a better analogy than Betamax and VHS, might be vinyl and analogue cassette...?

[why don't we have a "blue touchpaper" icon here, Reg folk?]

It's about time we were allowed to just buy a licence to watch a film indefinitely or for a finite period of time. You would register this at the film company and then they would provide a copy of the film in your chosen format for a nominal admin fee.

No V2000

No they moved from Betamax to V2000. Better technology but too late, little take-up and dead on arrival.

Quality had sod all to do with it....

....as Betamax lost out on 2 things.

A 3 hour blank VHS tape was an E-180, a Betamax 3h 35 min tape was an L-830 meaning that when purchasing the VHS number was easier to understand.

VHS tapes had two windows making it easier to quickly estimate if you had enough on the tape to get another hour of recording onto the tape. Betamax with it's one window and occasional tiny marks on it made that all but impossible for the average user.

As for the change, as a retailer if all of your suppliers say 'make this change or no more stock for you' the choice is simple, make the change or go out of business. For the linux boys, if open source is your thing then get your old action figures out, use your phone camera and lightworksbeta and make your own versions of the popular hits of today. Actually ...... sod you guys, I might just do that myself :D

Typical Linux user

OK, I'll just use Windows then. It can go in my password protected encrypted pirating partition, and run in a Virtualbox. What was that website called... TPB something...

You offering...

...to buy us all a copy? :-P

That hasn't happened to Netflix yet, at least not to my knowledge, and they use Silverlight also.

get_iplayer hasn't got the for-iPhone streams for a while now (the radio streams have been discontinued, so I hear). It pretends to be a Flash-enabled web browser.

And of course, the other streams aren't actually effectively protected. "Here is an obfuscated video stream" says the server, "and here's the key to de-obfuscate it".

Who cares

Nobody - I know at least - bothers with ripping from sources like this. By the time most movies even make it to the likes of Netflix the movie is already for sale in the stores for a week or two... and is usually out for download (so I hear) at least a week or two before that.

Don't get me wrong, I would like (really, really like) for my Netflix to work with Linux. I'd rather not have to rebuild my daughter's laptop to windows just for this reason when it works perfectly well otherwise.

No. Lovefilm have already confirmed that because of DRM issues they cannot/will not support Moonlight.

"Blame Flash/Adobe"

No, their only problem is that there's no DRM built into Flash. That's a Good Thing, really, and one of the reasons that Flash is better for consumers than Silverlight.

"Blame the Movie studios pressuring them."

Yes, absolutely. The moronic movie studios are so concerned about piracy that they're stupidly chasing away legitimate customers to prevent it. This move will result in an increase in piracy, as the first AC has already pointed out.

"Blame Netflix."

You do realize that Netflix was forced to make this same move several years ago, right? You can't watch Netflix on Linux or antique PPC based Macs either, and an Android it only works because there's an app for it.

Please understand

Content selection aside... Netflix uses Silverlight too, so they have the same issue with Linux desktops and laptops.

What they do have that LoveFilms apparently does not, is an Android app.

Not so crazy...

"The movie industry honestly believes that making it harder for it's honest, paying law abiding customers that have chosen to go down the legal movie streaming route is a good idea?"

Honest, law-abiding customers don't use Linux, thieving freetards who won't pay for the fruits of someone else's labour do. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Here's how you can tell it's bullshit.

"HTML 5 was considered"

They were told that Piracy / DRM / Whatever was a massive issue and considered HTML5?

No.