The Windows Media Player team released a new plug-in for FireFox.  Good for them!

You can see the video here.  (Note, I won't be offering Silverlight-based videos here until beta ;))

Note: Silverlight doesn't use video acceleration (such as Aero-enabled PCs) for Silverlight.  That's one of the ways we keep everythng consistent between applications.   Also resize rendering is dependent upon the browser's capabilities and refresh rate. 

As I speak, we're propping websites to introduce Microsoft Silverlight to the content creation and media community.  What is Microsoft Silverlight?  It's our solution for delivering media experiences with audio, video, animation, and interactivity cross-browser (e.g. Firefox, Safari, IE) and cross-platform (Mac and Windows).  Why are we doing it?  We've been listening to customers about the growing evolution of digital media as more than a destination, but an integral part of experiences on the web. Just like in the gaming community, user expectation of what makes a good web experience are increasing.  But then so are the costs of delivering those experiences.  Silverlight will address the rising costs of creation and rich media delivery  in two key ways- providing a consistent set of tools for development and design teams building applications for the Web and Windows, and support for lower cost of delivery of audio and video experiences when used with Windows Media Streaming - a benefit widely known in the industry (more on that later). 

But it's about more than a browser plug-in.  It's about the ecosystem.  On Day 1, Silverlight will work with the millions of Windows Media and VC-1 assets available on the Web.  It will work with Windows Media streaming servers, a much more efficient and responsible use of bandwidth on the web when compared to less scalable or bloated mechanisms such as progressive download.  The average viewer watches less than 20 seconds of a video that gets downloaded.  When the video is 5 minutes long, and the entire video still gets delivered, that's a waste.  It's like turning the fire hose on to fill a paper cup.

So, we're making new investments for Creation and Distribution of Silverlight media as well, including:

- Expression Media Encoder for publishing live and on-demand video on the Web that works on Mac and Windows, all using customizable templates for web UX.  Oh and guess what- it's going to be pluggable, supporting import of QuickTime, AVI, WMV, and any other well-formed DShow-based video format out of the gate, and publishing with the industry-recognized SMPTE VC-1 (WMV-9) format.  (SMPTE is Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers).  WMV today provides a single-codec solution that scales and is used from Archive to Mobile in a re-editable format.  Expression Media Encoder can also be run on the server.

- Hardware accelerated encoding support with Intel spinoff Tarari's Accelerator boards.  Time is money in the encoding world- you can encode significantly more content more cost-effectively, up to 15x faster for HD, and around 8x faster for SD content when dropping one of these boards into your server.

- Expression Blend - A new design tool for creating interactive experiences consistently for the Web and Windows, Blend will also support the creation of templates, "skins", or applications that can be published with Expression Media Encoder.

- Windows Media Streaming - New features to be made available in Windows Server code-name, "Longhorn" can increase scalability by up to 2x over Windows Server 2003.  The cost benefits of streaming are well known as well. If you want DVD-like functionality with Fast streaming, ability to jump to any point in your video instantly, a proven system for ad-insertion, and mature support for live streaming, Windows Media Streaming delivers today a reported 3-4 times the scalability of other solutions.  And we're going to make that even better.  Details on the NAB show floor and here shortly.

- IIS7 Media Pack - For those customers who plan to deliver progressively downloaded applications and media, IIS7 will include bit-rate throttling to more effectively deliver downloaded media.

One of the great things about Silverlight is that it plugs right into the existing Windows Media ecosystem. All the millions of hours of content available in Windows Media on the web will be able to be downloaded or streamed. 

Early customer support for Silverlight has been amazing.  Content providers including Major League Baseball, NetFlix, and even Web 2.0 darling Brightcove have announced support along with a growing list of partners.

Two weeks from now, you'll hear a lot more about the whole developer and designer story at MIX 07. We're just talking about the media aspects right now.  I'm going to be very busy with press and partner meetings over the next few days- but will do my best to touch base here. 

Last week, IP delivered television got a little closer to reality or a lot closer to irrational Web 2.0 exuberance when Amazon and TiVo flipped the switch enabling Amazon customers to send movies ordered from Amazon.com directly to your TiVo Series 2 or Series 3 boxes.  My wife and I took this for a spin last week, renting a few movies, including one with the $15 credit you get as a TiVo customer.  There's a few things I like about the service, and a lot I don't. 

What I like

• Convenience of ordering a movie from home or work
• Integration with Amazon.com is easy enough
• Ability to send to any TiVo in my home, or supported devices
• Selection is respectable
• TiVo Integration is simple- 'Amazon Unbox" shows up as a new Folder in Now Playing

What I don't like

• Lack of a subscription program. 
• No "Season Pass" purchase for TV programs
• No easy way to search/filter movies by MPAA rating
• On TiVo, no progress meter or estimated time until your movie is ready to start playing
• No HD downloads
• No 10' movie browser on Tivo.  All movies must be browsed & ordered with a PC
• Encoding is fuzzy
• No option to get the movie sent on DVD/HD-DVD as well

While this is definitely a step in the direction of convenience, if Amazon is serious about this business model, I hope they're working on a subscription program and/or considering a deal with NetFlix or Blockbuster directly (NetFlix acqusition anyone?).  I'm not likely to buy a $14.99 movie when $3.00 more a month gets me a subscription pass and HD movies on Blockbuster.

A few of you have been asking where I've been and why I've been so quiet about digital media. Has blogging become passe? Am I spending too much time reading Scoble? (no) or Pirillo (no)?   I am Twittering though - delivering bite size bloggables. Perhaps I joined Michael Gartenberg in returning to the "private sector"?  No again. I've been working heavily on exciting things we're going to unveil at MIX07.  If you're involved in digital media delivery on the web, you're going to want to see what we unveil at the show.

For the past six years, I've been involved in different aspects of digital media, dating back to Windows Media Player 7 and beyond.  With every release, a debate roiled internally - are we an experience or a platform?  More effort over time was put into creating an experience with Windows Media Player (as our customers were asking for), but the developer platform never saw much in the way of major leaps forward.  OCX updates were modest, load times were unacceptable to customers on web pages, and it was too complicated to create compelling and differentiated experiences.

Not for long.  We've been listening.  Taking notes.  Asking questions. Understanding what's needed to go beyond what's available today for delivering media-enriched experiences on the Web.  And MIX is where you're going to here more about that.  I have emails reporting that the media experience in www.vista.si from Microsoft Slovenia  beyond delivering a full Vista desktop emulator in "WPF/E" runs faster than some web-enabled experiences.

So at MIX, we're going to step it up with sessions dedicated to those focused on rich digital media delivery on the Web. You'll learn how to use new tools coming such as Expression Media Encoder, and how to use new features with Windows Server "Longhorn". Our team will be there- engaging in the conversation across a broad range of topics. 

Yesterday, I a podcast for the Mix website where I'll talk some more.  I'm going to be doing a lot of talking soon.  I'm also doing the first-day keynote at Streaming Media East. (Note to Dan Rayburn, I look about 10 years old in the picture on the site)

I'm also Twittering now.  The RSS feed is here.  Feel free to add me to your list if you dare.

I've been pretty heads down meeting with partners the past week so time to gome up for air.  Scott Guthrie, the General Manager for "WPF/E" among other things had an opportunity to do a guest spot on Red vs. Blue- the runaway hit machinima series choreographed in Halo 2.  The Channel 9 team even did a fun WPF/E-based player for it as well.

Check it out here.

Ouch and double ouch.

They've done this dance for a while, and with both seeing slowing subscriber rates, it's really no surprise.  I wonder what all the XM fanboys are going to say now?  I'm just happy I don't have to pay double for  my wife's "gift" of XM in her Honda,  and my Sirius subscription  in my car.   Pending shareholder approval, both companies expect the merger to be completed by end of this year.   Glad to see it- this is a situation where the consumer clearly wins.  More details at Orbitcast.

Still catching up on blogworthy items. As is customary with the release of any new OS, a lot of attention is being given to the new, native features of Windows Vista, the compatibility of devices as well as existing applications.  But what about new applications?  Vista doesn't rest on the laurels of traditional, flat, 2D applications. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a feature of Windows Vista that enables rich, textured, 3D applications to be built that take interactivity to a whole new level. 

One such application was developed by famed design firm, Metaliq. Their Snowboarding application incorporates two of my loves - snow sports and GPS.  Marrying 3D rotatable maps of Aspen Ski Resort with GPS data, it seamlessly integrates  live data, video clips and a playback reel give you the perspective of your runs as you head down. 

I'm a sucker for this kind of app I always take my GPS with me when I go skiing- just "Set it and forget it" while I'm riding.  When I get home, Pictures I take on the mountain are geotagged (I like RoboGeo), and I like to review representations of my runs on satellite maps with ExpertGPS or Google Earth.  This is admittedly geeky today, but imagine being able to sit down after a vacation with the family, and review your photos, ultimate runs, and home videos and navigate it visually.  It's clear we're just getting started.

It's the weekend, and a perfect time to go through Tim Sneath's blog list of amazing WPF applications.  C9 has a great list here as well.

Here's a list of some of my favorite english-language applications (German, French and others on  Tim's site as well):

1. NY Times Newsreader
2. Nostalgia Flickr Browser
3. British Library's Turning the Pages
4. Electric Rain's Standout 
5. Notescraps
6. Denounce (RSS/Podcast browser)
7. Cine.view (NetFlix browser)
8. Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista
9. Calendar Printing for Office 2007
10. Wikipedia Explorer
11. iBloks 3D Movie Creator

Let me know if you find more ;)