Advanced Television

Netflix drops Silverlight for HTML5

April 16, 2013

Netflix is planning to drop Microsoft’s Silverlight plug-in as it prepares to switch to HTML5 video in the coming years.

The Netflix Tech Blog cited Micorosoft’s decision to only support Silverlight 5 until 2021 as a reason to “find a replacement.” Netflix said that it has been collaborating with industry leaders on initiatives designed “to solve this problem of playing premium video content directly in the browser without the need for browser plug-ins such as Silverlight.”

It has already been working with Google to implement support for the HTML5 premium video extensions in the Chrome browser and has started using this on certain Samsung Chromebooks. It aims to test its HTML5 video player on Windows and OS X in the future.

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