Folks at BetaNews are reporting that Microsoft is working on a Silverlight based server side technology that could bring video content in an iPhone -friendly format. While Microsoft User Experience Platform Manager, Brian Goldfarb claims his company has been '
' on this, it looks more like Microsoft merely keeping Apple in the loop over what it has been developing.
So what does this new technology do? Goldfarb says
“What we're doing is taking content that's encoded for smooth streaming and enabling the content owner to say, 'I want to enable the iPhone .' The server will dynamically make the content work — same content, same point of origin — on the iPhone . We do this with the HTML 5
tag, in many ways.
We're translating the content to support the MPEG2 v8 [decoder] format [of] the iPhone ; we're moving it to their adaptive streaming format. So it's the same IIS smooth streaming content, the same server, the same point of origin, but now I can get that content to play without any code changes, without any real work, on the iPhone . That's the critical thing for our customers”
Does this mean Silverlight will overtake Flash in the race to reach the iPhone users? We have our doubts. Primarily, though Microsoft claims they are working ”
” Apple , Cupertino doesn't seem to be particularly interested. The present server-side technology as elaborated by Goldfarb is pretty similar to how iPhone users watch Youtube on their
and true compatibility only comes when a Silverlight plugin is made available for the iPhone browser, which has exactly been the point of contention between Apple and Adobe.
However with this, Microsoft has made its intentions to edge Adobe out and it will be an interesting battle to watch out for in the future; if Apple is willing to allow either of them, that is.