Why do you use Silverlight?

[Anonymous User]

Why do you use Silverlight?

I use Chrome, mainly on an old Macbook nowadays, and as you know based on the sticky I just read, Chrome no longer supports Silverlight.

So why haven't you moved to a platform that Chrome does support, like HTML5? Netflix has, and it works fine. iPlayer uses flash, but also works fine.

I don't use any other browser - they all run too slowly for me on my network connection. They're just unusable. So, how do I watch NowTV? It looks like I can't (on desktop) - this just isn't good enough. You should factor all changes into a service you provide - and this includes updating to different technologies if previously used ones become deprecated.

So, to consolidate my two questions (and I want a full answer, not just a macro response):

• Why do you use Silverlight?
• When will you be moving to a newer, more comaptible platform?

Thanks,

Liam

[Anonymous User]

Silverlight provides additional DRM which still isn't available in HTML5. The main one is the device fingerprints to ensure that you don't have more than 4 devices per account, which is part of the licensing agreements Sky have with the content providers.

[Anonymous User]

---

@Anonymous User wrote:
Silverlight provides additional DRM which still isn't available in HTML5. The main one is the device fingerprints to ensure that you don't have more than 4 devices per account, which is part of the licensing agreements Sky have with the content providers.

---

That answers one question, thanks 🙂

Liam

[Anonymous User]

Hi @Anonymous User 

Thanks for getting in touch.

As @Anonymous User has already answered your first query I won't go over it again however, with regards to your second question the answer is we don't currently have a set time frame.

NOW TV is constantly updating and evolving as a service and we appreciate that the incompatibility with Chrome is an inconvenience to some of our customers however, it's something that we're working on resolving.

I'm sure you can understand that the choice to remove Silverlight from Chrome was not something we had a say in and that we're doing what we can to find a solution.

I hope that answers your query.

Sabrina

NOW TV Team

[Anonymous User]

@Anonymous User thanks for the reply 🙂

The issue I have, is that you've had quite a long time to use a different technology - it was announced that the API Silverlight used was going to be removed from Chrome over a year ago. I'm almost certain at least a beta service could've been developed in that time.

Like I said, no other browsers work for me. They're just too slow and crash reguarly. Luckily I have my mobile devices (although they don't work - see my first topic).

Thanks again for the response,

Liam

[Anonymous User]

---

slenpree wrote:

It's 2015, I can't believe NowTV is still using silverlight, which by the way Microsoft is discontinuing.

---

In 2021

[Anonymous User]

Even Microsoft have binned off support for Silverlight within their own latest browser (Microsoft Edge).

Between Firefox / IE / Opera they only handle 25% of the total internet traffic.

Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

Time to wake up and smell the coffee guys. Insistence on using outdated technology wil be your downfall.

In my opinion the Windows App is not a great alternative so how about investing some of the £17.6bn that your company is worth in providing the latest tech for the growing masses or the competition will just move on ahead of you.

[Anonymous User]

Edge is not going to work on MANY MANY sites... MICROSOFT know this and have included the "OPEN IN IE BROWSER" button because they Know the browser is junk at supporting sites still...

IE still supports silverlight as does Firefox...

Edge is not finished... and its addons and extras have yet to be finalised...

IE and Firefox are not going any were on windows 10... and won't for a long time... 

[Anonymous User]

@Anonymous User  I might have missed the point, but Edge seems like the version of IE that was on the Metro screen in Win8 and pretty crap.  What's the point of it when there's IE11?

[Anonymous User]

Edge IS meant to be the Open standard Web browser Client that does not force microsoft only Coding on to web site designers... that IE does...

But because it does not force IE coding it does not work on web sites, breaking sites that expects a windows OS browser to run IE coding...

The point of edge was to be the FASTEST and light browser for W10 in desktop... They went to far... in the quest for javascript rendering speed... Its fast but you can't do the basic things...

Its a speed of rendering proof of coding product... but use less if you want to do more then web surfing by clicking on links...

For example "no bookmark bar" still of by default and called favourites... IE still forces coding changes to support its functions...

Edge moves the web render engine nearer to webkit and closer to Safari/Google/Edge all sharing a single web page template...

Edge supported standards in browser agent iD

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/42.0.2311.135 Safari/537.36 Edge/12

@Anonymous User You still blocked from installing then ...

Extra = No adblock... so you get reminded just how bad the adds are on some sites...