I was having a read through of the feature set for Silverlight 2 Beta 2. One of the items that instantly stood out for me was the fact that with Beta 2 Support for DRM (Digital Rights Management) has made it, and more importantly...........IT’S CROSS BROWSER AND CROSS PLATFORM! Now let me be clear on this, I am not a fan of DRM as I believe as a consumer I have the right to use the content I have paid for in anyway I choose. I’m not suggesting copying and passing on too friends is fairplay but I do feel I should be able to duplicate the media for all the devices in my home. That said, although I am not a fan of DRM personally, I can greet this news with optimism and here is why.
About 18 months ago I was working on a contract for Siemens who were developing the packaging and delivery of the BBC IPlayers content. This was interesting work and really opened my eyes to the amount of effort that must go into launching a platform like the IPlayer. 18 months ago none of us working on the project had any idea as to how successful the IPlayer would be, therefore the application was built with performance and scalability in mind. A good thing too given the way it panned out.
While working on the project, one area I felt was seriously lacking was the cross platform support. All content delivered via the VOD system is encrypted using Windows DRM. As the name suggest, the result that decision was that all content inevitably becomes locked into the windows platform. Therefore unless you’re on a windows platform, the IPlayer would be useless to you.
The BBC were not the only ones to adopt this approach, SKY, ITV and Channel 4 have all built their VOD platforms on the Kontiki P2P system using Windows DRM. So as a guy with a Mac (Yes I run windows vista on it) I could consider myself up shits creek! So the question is, why is this good news? It’s good news as whether we like it or not DRM is essential for large media conglomerate when it comes to delivering their content over the web. Whether we like it or not, I still cannot see them dropping it due to public demand. Therefore, with Silverlight providing the tools necessasary for cross-platform DRM, adaptable streaming and the ability to generate amazing RIA’s there are very little hurdles left to overcome.
I expect to see the BBC move this way as they have previously confirmed that Mac support was on their todo list. Also some of the demo’s from MIX07 with the BBC Radio 1 site delivered via Silverlight show the potential. I am hoping to have a play with the new Silverlight 2 Beta 2 features in the next few weeks so expect some posts then.