Netflix enters Macs via Silverlight, Apple’s iPhone next?
Ever since Netflix introduced it’s streaming video feature, Mac users have been asking “what about us?” Finally Netflix has stepped up to the plate and is offering its 12,000 downloadable titles to Mac users via Microsoft’s Silverlight.
Back in August 2007 Netflix assured customers that:
. . . we’re committed to giving all of our members access to our instant watching feature. Both Mac and Firefox are on the list.
A key issue for delivering movies online is that the studios require use of DRM (Digital Rights Management) to protect titles. And that’s our holdup for the Mac – there’s not yet a studio-sanctioned, publicly-available Mac DRM solution (Apple doesn’t license theirs)
It seems that Netflix has followed up on its promise because its new media player will open video streams using Microsoft’s Play Ready DRM solution that is delivered through Silverlight. Prior to that, Max had no easily obtainable solution for a company like Netflix – another interesting interplay between the historic rivals Microsoft and Apple.
The media player will only work for Intel based Macs though, so older machines are still out of luck.
But, the next largest segment for Netflix will be mobile users, and the king of tech-savvy mobile users right now is the iPhone. It’s easy to manage your Netflix queue from an iPhone, but actually watching a streaming movie through the service is more difficult. There are solutions out on the wild web, but they certainly aren’t intended for a casual viewer.
Silverlight is Microsoft’s answer to Adobe Flash, and it brings some tight integration with .NET, along with its ability to display vector content, audio, and video. Netflix’s decision to embrace the platform speaks to Microsoft’s ability to reassure studios that their content is securely protected by DRM. Adobe may have a far larger audience of Flash users, for now, but it will need to continue innovating if it expects to stay ahead of Microsoft.
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