macnn
05/19/2008, 11:15am, EDT
Monday, May 19th
ITV website adds Mac compatibility
British TV broadcaster ITV is officially supporting Macs for web-based viewing, it has announced. The network lets users watch a number of programs online, such as Coronation Street, Britain's Got Talent and Pushing Daisies; until recently however users were forced to use Windows, and ideally Internet Explorer. The site now runs on Firefox 1.5 and 2, as well as Safari; the key difference is that these require Microsoft's Silverlight plug-in, which operates similarly to Flash. Mac owners must be running Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later.
Filed under: software
Other story tags: video, TV, UK, Silverlight, ITV
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License fee
So does this mean i dont need a TV and i can stop paying my license fee?
silverlight
I would prefer if Flash would die a sudden and uneventful death. Why on Earth would I want to add yet another proprietary plug-in to replace it? And from Microsoft of all places!
DRM, perhaps
CF - no, they've changed the rules, which effectively means there is now an 'Internet license'.
Ender - they need to use something, be it Real, Flash or Silverlight, because there is no open standard for unrecordable streaming media, and current business models can't support free-as-in-beer DRM-free program making, but rely on things like repeats and DVD after-sales to pay for program making.
But agreed, I really don't understand why they went with Silverlight given that Flash is a well proven technology (and a proven success for the BBC iPlayer). I suspect they were offered a large carrot (i.e. MS offered to pay for the development).