Here is why Microsoft Silverlight is superior to Adobe Flash
This is a good test for a netbook to run to show that 720P Silverlight works on a slow netbook while Adobe Flash 720p will not. Oh and what do you know, this even plays fine in Google Chrome.
This same clip on YouTube in Adobe Flash 720P won’t work on any low end graphics chipset computers which includes the vast majority of netbooks on the market and also many lower end desktop systems with integrated graphics. Try the video below on your netbook or low-end desktop and watch it choke. I can’t even get the supposed hardware accelerated beta 10 Flash player working on netbooks.
The Silverlight clip is encoded with VC-1 compression at 2.25 Mbps and the Youtube version is 2.25 Mbps H.264. Silverlight plays fine on the Asus 1000HE netbook I’m reviewing and that says a lot about the coding efficiency of Microsoft Silverlight. To be more precise, Process Explorer shows that the Silverlight version cost me around 73 billion CPU cycles to play the full clip while the Flash verion cost me around 107 billion CPU cycles. That means 720P Silverlight barely works on netbooks while Adobe flash doesn’t have a chance. Now the Silverlight player still takes twice as much CPU utilization as the native Windows Media player application so it’s as smooth as I’d like it to be, but it could easily be smooth if the video was encoded down to 1024×576 resolution which would be more ideal for 2 Mbps video streams anyways. Maybe the Microsoft team can do some more optimizations to make the Silverlight player closer to Windows Media 11 in terms of performance.
Our fellow blogger Charles Burns asked me if this was due to the different compression algorithm being used (VC-1 versus H.264), and I think that’s part of the reason but not most of the reason. The fact that Silverlight uses VC-1 is a built in advantage, but contrary to popular misconception, netbooks can play 720P H.264 just fine. I’ve done it with as little as 45% CPU utilization on a standard 945-chipset netbook so long as I’m using something good like VLC player. Apple QuickTime player chokes but that’s a whole separate topic. The bottom line here is that Silverlight is CPU/GPU friendly while Flash isn’t.
Larry Seltzer also made a great point to me that Silverlight has been out for 2 years now and there have been no security vulnerabilities it exposes you to unlike Adobe flash which is frequently exposing us to security vulnerabilities. I think this is a clear example of why Silverlight is winning so many customers, and Adobe better do something to optimize their software because netbooks are here to stay and their market share is growing. More and more people will expect to be able to view 720P streaming video on every computer they own and not just their high-end systems.
Here’re a native Windows-only Windows Media Player version that runs on Windows systems running IE, Firefox, or Chrome. It apparently runs about 2x faster than Silverlight and about 3x faster than Flash. If you’re on a netbook or low end desktop, this is the most CPU friendly solution. In fact, it plays with only 42% CPU utilization across both Atom processor threads.
Works fine with moonlight on a vintage Toshiba satellite 1.6GHz and Firefox 3.1 beta 3.
Have you experimented at with it’s adaptive Media Stream Source adaptive decoding?–it should especially good with H.264 sources.
No, I haven’t tried it with H.264 yet.
Can you try the same video clip on the YouTube 720P link with that older Toshiba? Is that a Core 2 or Pentium 3 1.6?
>Can you try the same video clip on the YouTube 720P link with that older Toshiba? Is that a Core 2 or Pentium 3 1.6?
Just tried it–unacceptable–S-L-O-W as a ’sloth’
Here’s the details on the Toshiba:
http://www.smolts.org/show?uuid=pub_81cee2e5-7b47-44b2-b750-958ec6dad327
I point out the difference in CPU requirements in terms of how many more CPU cycles you need to play the video clip.
Running Fedora 10 x64 on an HP Pavillion 9000 laptop, I had no issues running the video with Flash and Firefox.
HP 9000 is a full computer, not a netbook or a desktop with lowend graphics. The fact that you’re not having any issues playing the Flash video doesn’t do anything for the massive market that can’t.
George, given the difference in market share, isn’t it possible (even likely) that the reason that Flash has so many security issues is because of it’s popularity? I don’t know the user delta, but I can’t say I’ve come across to many sites that use Silverlight. A hacker would be stupid to spend time writing a virus for the Mac, because they’d need to be at least 10x as as successful on the Apple PC to achieve the same number of infections as they’d get targeting a PC. I would think that would also hold true for Silverlight vs Flash. Personally, I’ve always found Flash a CPU hog, which is why I block all flash by default.
As an aside, the reason I have Silverlight installed, new sight required it to watch video….the strange thing is that I needed flash too. I assume they were moving to Silverlight, but I was only there because a hurricane was heading towards my parents.
I should have said the reason that Silverlight has no known (or very few) vulnerabilities is because of it’s limited market share. Obviously vulnerabilities exist whether they’re known or not.
I think it has to do with the fact that Flash is vector painting program-turned animation program-turned development platform-turned video embedder, whereas Silverlight was designed from the ground up to be a development platform with video embedding. In my mind, taking an old platform through so many phases is bound to give you a weaker and less-stable system. This is why I was happy about the introduction of MS Silverlight.
What about other OS? Is there a Linux version of Microsoft Silverlight? I don’t think so, and if it would exist it wouldn’t be Open Source friendly like Flash is.
Silverlight does work in Linux.
@Fabricio Biazzotto
The Linux version of Silverlight is as open source friendly as Mono is. Depending on your stance on Mono, that means either “friendly” or “unfriendly”.
J.Ja