Streaming the 2008 Beijing Olympics

In addition, the "enhanced player mode" in the NBCOlympics.com player expands the video window into a full-screen view while retaining the transparent interface overlays. For those who lose track of time while watching women’s clean and jerk weightlifting, the "viewing alerts" feature enables pop-up notifications that let viewers know when selected events are starting.

Schematic was the logical choice to design the NBCOlympics.com player for a number of reasons. Besides having designed NBCU’s first broadband player in 2006, Schematic had been hired that same year by Microsoft to provide feedback on Silverlight (before it was called Silverlight) and Microsoft’s Expression line of development tools. By the time NBCOlympics.com was ready to hire a designer for the Silverlight player, Schematic already had a team of 25 who had been working on Silverlight for more than a year. But taking responsibility for designing the player that would showcase Silverlight in its high-profile Olympics rollout was no small task.

"It comes with a certain element of danger and jeopardy to be building something this big and important on a brand new platform," says Rechs. "That always ups the excitement level."

Going After Adobe
The features that Silverlight offers to improve the user experience may be impressive, but perhaps just as important to the technology’s acceptance in the marketplace are the attributes that only developers would appreciate. One of the key innovations of Silverlight 2 is its integration into Microsoft’s .NET technology ecosystem. (.NET is both a business strategy from Microsoft and its collection of programming support for web services—the ability to use the web rather than one’s own computer for various services.) Tens of thousands of developers identify with .NET and think of themselves as ".NET developers," but prior to the advent of Silverlight, those developers who wanted to make a rich internet application (RIA) with video, animations, transitions, vector graphics, and a great user interface would most likely turn to Adobe’s Flash. Now, .NET developers can work with the familiar .NET toolset to create RIAs at least as sophisticated as those offered in Flash.

"Part of what you get when you use Silverlight are components that Microsoft provides to do a lot of the stuff that they know you’re going to want to do," says Rechs. "We have to do less and less of it from scratch, so we’re able to get more done in less time for less money."

For the past few years, Microsoft has also been seeking to streamline the Windows-based development process with the introduction of its Expression Studio suite of design tools, which is meant to facilitate the interface between designers using Expression and developers using Visual Studio. With Silverlight, Expression, and Visual Studio all working under the .NET framework, Microsoft hopes to keep .NET-savvy developers from straying off the Microsoft ranch. (Expression Studio can be used to create cross-platform RIAs, but with the exception of Expression Media, the Expression Studio suite is not available for a Mac development environment.)

Microsoft’s introduction of Silverlight is clearly a shot across Adobe’s bow. The online video player battle is essentially an arms race; when one side seizes an advantage, the other has to innovate its way back into contention. With Flash having become a de facto standard in the online video advertising world, Microsoft has its work cut out for it.

"Adobe has come at it from the strength of the creative community," says Steve Sklepowich, group product manager for Silverlight Media at Microsoft Corp. "We’ve come at it from the strength of Windows Media together with the strength of the developer community, and now we’re reaching out to the design community with the Expression tool."

Getting designers and developers on board is a start, but reaching critical mass in user adoption is ultimately the name of the game. With Flash 9 claiming more than 96% penetration, Adobe has a huge head start. Microsoft may claim an average of 1.5 million daily downloads of Silverlight’s 4 MB plugin, but it’s at the Olympics that Microsoft expects Silverlight to make its biggest splash.

Monetizing the Games
With so many broadcast advertising dollars at stake, NBCU is not offering live coverage online simply because it thinks streaming video is "cool." Rather, it appears as if online video is attracting an increasing share of ad spending, and NBCU’s view of the advertising future—perhaps influenced by the DVR’s impact on broadcast advertising—no doubt includes a growing online video component. The Beijing Olympics will offer NBCU the opportunity to gauge the willingness of advertisers, agencies, and end users to accept and pay for online video ads. (NBCOlympics.com had already sold 70% of its ad inventory 4 months before the start of the games.) But while ad sales are clearly critical to its success, NBCOlympics.com wants to be careful not to trash the user experience.