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What is Microsoft Silverlight? (1 Viewer)

Stan

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Hard drive on 1 1//2 year old HP dv6 croaked. Had a new 500 Gb. drive and the basic Windows Home Premium installed. Will get the install disks from HP next week so I can get the fingerprint scanner to work.

Everything else, after hours and hours of upgrades for SP1, IE11, security upgrades and other patches are working fine.But some videos, seemingly random come up blank, telling me to download "Microsoft Silverlight". Stuff from MSN, lame Wonderwall celebrity video clips, movie previews, etc. Some work fine, others ask for this download.What is it? Wasn't part of my previous install, never even heard of it before.
Done some research, but coming up with lots of oddballs that claim it's a Microsoft conspiracy theory to load more monitoring software on your computer. Uninstalled it since it seemed to be automatic, but now a lot of things ask me to install it, or videos don't play?
 

Stan

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Seems to have automatically installed itself again as part of a Windows update, everything works fine now.
Must have been one of those "behind the scenes" pieces of software I never even realized I had.

Thanks, Guys.
 
L

Laura98

Microsoft Silverlight is a free web-browser plug-in that enables interactive media experiences, rich business applications and immersive mobile apps.
 

Sam Posten

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Laura98 said:
Microsoft Silverlight is a free web-browser plug-in that enables interactive media experiences, rich business applications and immersive mobile apps.
You make it sound a lot more appealing than it actually is. It's a flash alternative with Microsoft brand DRM.
 

Ejanss

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Sam Posten said:
Precisely that. It's a means to an ends, not some fairy tale amazing tech.
Again, it's Microsoft's attempt to "corner" the Flash .FLV streaming market, seeing as how .WMV didn't exactly wipe Apple's QuickTime off the face of the earth.
It's nominally better-looking than Flash when you're watching Netflix or Warner Instant Archive over the browser, but not having the "common" Flash makes it harder to do non-browser apps, eg. over game consoles or AppleTV. (So, for those who are wondering why we still don't have a PS3 app for Warner Instant Archive...)

Even seems to be a non-agression pact with Apple to use it in Safari as a common QuickTime plug-in, although by now the format is treated as "...Yeah, whatever, Bill. :rolleyes: "
 

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