Lovefilm replaces Flash with Silverlight for streaming

With the demise of Flash on mobile platforms as well as for the Smart TV in your living room, it goes without saying that companies which rely on Flash to stream or deliver their data to the masses will need to check out another alternative. Well, Lovefilm has decided that they will no longer use Flash from next year onwards to stream their movies over for your viewing pleasure, but has decided to stick to Microsoft’s Silverlight instead. The reason behind this is because movie studios are asking them to do so.

According to Lovefilm, “We’ve been asked to make this change by the Studios who provide us with the films in the first place, because they’re insisting – understandably – that we use robust security to protect their films from piracy, and they see the Silverlight software as more secure than Flash.”

This might just result in quality improvement for Lovefilm’s streams, since Silverlight holds a technology known as Smooth Streaming that will automatically adjust the quality of the video stream to the best level, depending on the quality of your Internet connection. This means that buffering is reduced in the long run for those on a low broadband speed.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Photo-Video
Tags: lovefilm, silverlight