Netflix Upgrades Media Player

LOS GATOS, October 27: Netflix has upgraded
its video player with Microsoft Silverlight
technology, a move that expands the online movie rental company’s streaming
service to subscribers with Intel-based Apple Macintosh computers.

The deployment, which will initially touch a small percentage of
new Netflix subscribers, is the first step in an
anticipated rollout of the new platform to all subscribers by the end of the
year.

In addition to making the instant streaming available on Macs, Silverlight is expected to deliver a faster, easier connection
and a more robust viewing experience.

"Silverlight with PlayReady offers a powerful and secure toolkit for delivery
of dynamic streaming, which offers faster start-up, and higher quality video,
adapted in real time to users' connection speeds," said Netflix’s chief product officer, Neil Hunt. "Members
who enjoy watching movies and TV episodes from the growing library of choices
that can be instantly streamed at Netflix will be
thrilled with this next generation improvement of access and quality, on a
broader range of platforms, including Intel Macs and Firefox."

"Instantly streaming from Netflix
directly addresses the needs and wants of today's web users by providing
on-demand, high-quality online video," added Scott Guthrie, the corporate
VP of the developer division at Microsoft Corp. "By using Silverlight, Netflix can deliver
to its subscribers a higher-quality video experience on the web, on more
platforms."

Silverlight
was utilized by NBCOlympics.com this summer to stream thousands of hours
of live and on-demand online video from Beijing.

—By Mansha Daswani