Microsoft "Wins the Gold" in Online Video Format Competion: 2008 Beijing Olympics to Stream on Silverlight

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Last year, Microsoft introduced Silverlight, a new multi-media browser based application to present video and other rich media.  It is direct competition to Adobe's Flash, the ubiquitous program that dominates video distribution and viewing.

A few moments ago in Las Vegas, at the sprawling CES show, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced that NBC Universal, the official broadcaster of the Olympic games would use Silverlight to stream some 3,000 hours of video from the Beijing Games.  Here are more details.

While Silverlight has been used by Major League Baseball, it has not been widely deployed.  Surely the online presentation of the Olympics will change all of that.

Last year, I interviewed Microsoft's Sean Alexander about Silverlight and he shared a demo of the MLB page.  Check out this video to get an idea of how cool the Olympics will be online.

You can grab the embed code of my interview with Sean right here.

-- Andy Plesser

Below is an interview with Bill Gates done by the Microsoft Channel 10 team:

Bill Gates @ CES 2008