Such welcome news. Silverlight has always been a pain in the ass; sporadic 
updates that were awkwardly implemented and less-than-stellar support from 
Microsoft. 
http://www.slashgear.com/netflix-switching-to-html5-video-from-silverlight-15277927/

Netflix switching to HTML5 video from Silverlight

When Microsoft announced that Silverlight would be coming to an end in 2021, it 
gave companies that utilize the video technology less than a decade to 
gravitate to an alternative. Perhaps the biggest and most prolific user of 
Silverlight is Netflix, which takes advantage of its “high-quality streaming 
experience” for Watch Instantly. Today the company announced that in light of 
Microsoft’s announcement, it will be switching to HTML5 video.




Netflix talks about the reality of video plugins, making specific mentions of 
browsers that don’t support them (Internet Explorer in Metro Mode, for 
example), as well as the security risk using plugins can pose. Moving to HTML5 
from Silverlight will take care of these two issues, and will open up the 
ability to watch instant video via the service on a wider range of devices and 
browsers.

For now, Netflix is waiting to make the switch on what it calls three “premium 
video extensions”: Media Source Extensions, Encrypted Media Extensions, and Web 
Cryptography API. The company says it is working with industry leaders, and 
that these initiatives will be the solution to current issues with delivering 
video in the absense of a plugin like Silverlight.

The first iteration of this has been pushed out for the Samsung ARM-based 
Chromebook, which takes advantage of the Media Source Extensions and Encrypted 
Media Extensions in Chrome browser to deliver Silverlight-free video content. 
According to Netflix, Web Cryptography API isn’t in use on the Chromebook yet, 
instead being replaced with Netflix’s own Pepper Plugin API. The PPAPI plugin 
will be swapped out with WebCrypto when it is available via Chrome, at which 
point HTML5 video testing will start for OS X and Windows.

[via Netflix]


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