« Windows Media Services for Windows Server 2008 June CTP | Home | Live Earth will be streamed live using Windows Media »
CNN drops Windows Media for Flash in redesigned website
By Mack Male | July 1, 2007 at 6:59 pm
CNN officially launched their new, redesigned website today. The site, which has been in beta for a few weeks, includes many “web 2.0″ features like user generated content, podcasts, and a clean, simple layout. For a great overview of the new site, check out Read/WriteWeb.
Video (and multimedia in general) is a major feature of the new site. In the past CNN has been a major user of Windows Media formats, but that has changed with the redesign. All videos are now encoded to Flash (FLV) meaning you no longer need to have Windows Media Player installed to view them.
In fact, the only feature I can see that still uses Windows Media is the radio stream. The site says Live Video is coming soon, and that may use Windows Media as well. Otherwise, everything is either Flash or MP3/M4V (podcasts).
All video content at CNN.com is free, so they have no need for DRM. Thus, it makes sense to move from Windows Media to Flash, as more users/computers have Flash installed than Windows Media Player.
This seems to be a growing trend - moving video content to Flash. Call it the YouTube effect I guess. I wonder if Silverlight will do anything to stop this? Windows Media and the other codecs that Silverlight support offer much higher quality than Flash.
Time will tell!
Tags: cnn, flash, Silverlight, windows media
Topics: Codecs, Silverlight, Windows Media Player |
July 29th, 2007 at 9:05 am
Trouble is Windows Media and Silverlight aren’t cross-platform. You can view Flash video on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux with no problem. But to view Windows Media on those platforms requires ugly hacks.
This is the problem when the owner of a video format also owns an operating system. Conflict of interest supporting other operating systems. Open formats are the way to go.
January 24th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
I have know what you mean. good advice, wish I had read this a month ago.
February 4th, 2010 at 6:59 pm
Cheers for this post, I have learned a lot more now about mp3’s. My personal place is a directory I found somewhere on bing. It has storaged hundreds of mp3’s. I’ve added the link in that website url option. Hope to see a lot more blogposts from you!
February 7th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
I
February 7th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
I was searching for repairing my xbox when I found your site. Great post. Thank You.
March 2nd, 2010 at 7:16 pm
Your site is loading average for me. Might just be my isp but i don’t know… anyways great read. It helps me a lot, many thanks. Will be sure to bookmark your blog for future reference