One has to wonder why Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) bothered creating Silverlight, when Adobe’s Flash had long ago become the effective standard for rich on-web media. So we scratched our heads when ITV (LSE: ITV) made the crazy decision to use Silverlight, which few people had on their computers, for one of its recent ITV.com incarnations (it’s as though the broadcaster wanted to limit its audience).
Still, ITV has now rectified that, switching instead to Flash for its catch-up videos, it confirmed via Twitter.
While it’s the BBC’s iPlayer that spearheaded UK viewers’ VOD adoption in the last two years, ITV.com video views have also grown impressively over the last year, despite being hampered by its choice of technology, which has been bemoaned by some viewers on its forums – average monthly views increasing 250 percent from last year to 19 million between January and June. But imagine how this will now continue growing in lieu of Silverlight.
“ITV continues to use Microsoft’s products extensively to develop and deliver solutions to our viewers,” an ITV spokesperson offered as an olive branch to Microsoft (via The Reg).
MSN has used Silverlight for one of the technology’s highest-profile UK deployments – Endemol’s video drama Kirill, which earned a Webby award for drama.