Posts by James2011

Lovefilm dumps Flash, BLINDS Linux fans with Silverlight

Having a choice would be nice

Many people around the UK have low speed connections which would make getting higher quality difficult. However I would have been nice to have the choice of quality ie. Low, Med (DVD), High (HD).

And yes, the films where badly encoded.

Most set-top boxes run of Linux - do your homework

Most set-top boxes run of Linux - do your homework

Windows 8 Myth

Yes Windows 8 does support Silverlight and the lovefilm service does work on it. (I did not someone complaining that it was not going to be supported but it is.)

My nee-jurk response -> and now after careful consideration

This is mainly speculation but as I understand the story so far:

lovefilm want to increase their range of films that they can offer to enhance our (the customer’s) experience and bring in revenue; which is generally expected of a company! In order to achieve this the studios have said that they require that vendors use the up-to-date DRM which I am assuming is something like PlayReady that happens to be owned by Microsoft thus, Silverlight was an obvious choice.

Microsoft have been planning to stop development of Silverlight for the PC platform but continue development for mobile devices. Silverlight is really just for front-end presenter so it does not really matter that much as the cost is more significant in the server side technology for delivering content securely and thus the cost of changing the front-end is low risk and not cost prohibitive to upgrade latter down the line.

(It is important to point out that other media providers have already moved to Silverlight and that there has been talk of flash being dropped by Adobe, and thus it would be folly not to make the change.)

The key to this streaming technology is PlayReady. PlayReady being backed by both technology giant Microsoft and a number of film studios is the reason. (Obviously a ‘newish’ revenue stream for MS but that’s what business is about – although I have used Zune in the past.)

I am very much looking forward to the XBOX360 support coming in the next few weeks for lovefilm customer’s. It was just a bit of a slap in the face to halt Linux support but really only a minor inconvenience.

PS. Just make sure you secure rights to stream the new James Bond film when it’s finished!!!!! Also, keep pressing to get the best films and in HD with good quality video compression, after all that’s the most important thing, that’s what customer’s really care about; content availability; quality; and at a very competitive price.

It would be useful to have options on quality so people with slower hardware or connection can get to use the service but those of us that are lucky enough to get 50Mb broad band and have fast PC’s etc... can get HD (and I guess HD 3D in the not too distance future).

Surprising - THanks for the XMAS present - not

I would be very interested to know how many Linux based customers lovefilm.com have; or had ;-(.

Good news for XBOX 360 users, should have something to try in the next few weeks - yay.

Move to Silverlight and ditched Linux users - boo.

www.lovefilm.com still down right now; accidental or upset Linux user(s)?

Don’t forget Amazon may have been involved in this decision. (There on-line shopping is great though.)