By Don Burnett

A rumor posting from someone who is obviously a "fan boy"  is causing a lot of confusion on the net today.. It's a shame to have to post this considering the exciting news about H.264 for Silverlight that happened today..  However to set the record straight for readers here (who have emailed and asked), here we go...

Simply NBC, MSNBC, and even Microsoft doesn't use one video player as a deliverly mechanism "exclusively" at this time. For instance you'll still at the moment see Flash videos on MSN Soapbox (a Microsoft Videos Site)..

It's not an all or nothing thing here, despite what the author of the original post would have you think.

No one "switched back" this is more about the content deal with NFL and NBC that chose to use Flash in this instance for this particular content. Also, they haven't commented that they aren't using Silverlight in other upcoming things either.

It's lame when someone writes a posting that can be highly misinterpreted here like this one..

Silverlight and the Olympics deal from what I know were wildly successful, but because the companies involved haven't disclosed numbers at this time, this is just another effort to try to get Microsoft to do so and defend Silverlight, something it truly does not need to do..

I suspect whenever we find out the real measure of all of Silverlight/Olympics numbers etc., that  others won't be able to try to use the information as a competitive advantage over Silverlight.

Besides the fact that Flash and Silverlight both install in a browser in virtually a few moments without even having to really think about it, there is room for both.

I think posts like the main one here are an easy way to sabotage Silverlight in people's minds since the numbers aren't being readily available.. And for the record Silverlight wasn't the only way to get content if you had Windows Media Center (but people really haven't even commented on that effort yet either)..

If you are curious to just how successful Microsoft was (without knowing the actual numbers..) check out the comments of a Microsoft guy (C.Carper) at the "Business of Silverlight Blog" who states the following...

"I have had several mails today and saw several articles that NBC "dumped" Silverlight for Sunday Night Football. I wanted to set the record straight here. NBC has not dumped Silverlight, nor for that matter forgot to use Silverlight. :) NBC and Microsoft pulled off the largest, most viewed online event ever and the video quality, along with the user experience set the bar for new, more advanced applications online. Our relationship could not be stronger with NBC, and the success of the event has propelled our partnership to new levels. We are moving forward together and we are looking to do more with them in the near future.
To better understand how this played out you have to understand how the technology decisions are made. For the 2008 Olympics, NBC had all the broadcast and online rights in the US (reported to have paid 800+ million) to the Olympics coverage and therefore was the primary decision maker in what technology would be used. In this case they chose to use Silverlight and partnered with MSN to promote and drive traffic to their application.
Unlike the Olympics, Sunday Night Football is a joint effort between the NFL and NBC Sports. The NFL made the technology choices on what technology to use online and was ultimately responsible for the application. The NFL chose flash. It's even called out in the Adobe press release."