Silverlight for PPV VOD?

Originally Posted by bobgpsr

Does the Netflix do better than SD? I considering the capability of Silverlight right now going beyond Standard Definition. I've used Amazon Unbox some, but been disappointed with the mostly 2 chan sound and only SD video definition. Plus it is a clunky application, memory resident, often has startup problems on PC reboot, etc. I guess that is part of the price to pay for being able to order a title at a work PC to get pushed onto a home PC and ready to watch that evening.

Would think that IE with a plugin might be a lot simpler and easier.

Netflix has used Windows Media DRM 10 to protect the 7,000 choices of movies and TV episodes that our 7.5 million members can watch instantly on the PC," said Neil Hunt, chief product officer for Netflix. "We look forward to expanding platform coverage using Silverlight with PlayReady, which is expected to satisfy industry requirements for content protection and simplify and improve the end-user experience."

Mobile seems the perfect medium for subscription music services, is it DRM issues that have held them back in the past?

Yeah, I think subscriptions are a very interesting business model, where there’s a critical need for content access technology. We prefer that term to DRM. Technically they’re the same thing, but content access technology really turns the lens around and focuses on the fact that what we’re doing is enabling interesting opportunities for consumers, and for operators to offer innovative services.

So for subscriptions, I think China Mobile has a ringtone subscription service where you pay a flat-rate fee, so rather than purchasing ringtones one at a time, you get access to unlimited ringtones for a flat monthly fee. That’s an example of a very interesting application of the subscription business model to something very popular like ringtones.

Originally Posted by bobgpsr

With the Paramount annoucement will a person eventually be able to order a Pay Per View movie title from Paramount and watch it full screen in simple IE (with Silverlight plug-in). That is hit Alt-Enter to go fullscreen and watch a movie title in HD-Lite (1280x720p24) with 5.1 surround audio?

I know that Silverlight seems to be aiming for more with Rich Interactive Applications (RIA) for the web, but it seems to me that once enough bandwidth to the user's PC and enough PC capability (CPU/GPU) is there, then the above could happen.

Originally Posted by bobgpsr

Thanks for the reply Ben. I'll tryout your samples this weekend.

But for any movie which had an original soundtrack with more than stereo, I want multichannel sound. Surround audio is a big deal to me. I am not like the current mass market that is willing to use speakers built into a TV, instead I always disable them and use an AVR. Hence I hang out in internet home theater forums.

Originally Posted by bobgpsr

I tried your samples on your blog, especially the "What Happens in Vegas" one. Very nice video quality and smooth playback. Much nicer than the Fox trailer samples, but they did have very deep and powerfull bass.

So would full length move playback of two or three hours require Silverlight to use a Playlist for segments of the movie?