Netflix says 'goodbye Silverlight', 'hello, HTML5'

With what I can only presume is wry sense of humor, Netflix's Anthony Park and Mark Watson post: "Since Microsoft announced the end of life of Silverlight 5 in 2021, we need to find a replacement some time within the next 8 years". Well, hell, that ought to be enough time. "We'd like to share some progress we've made towards our goal of moving to HTML5 video".

Last month, Netflix finally brought video streaming to the Samsung ARM Chromebook. I wondered if that might be the future for everything. Sure enough, Netflix confirms.

HTML5 streaming support for the Chromebook is a work in progress. Netflix pursues three W3C-sanctioned specifications: Media Source Extensions, Encrypted Media Extensions and Web Cryptography API.

The Netflixers explain about early implementation:

Our player on this Chromebook device uses the Media Source Extensions and Encrypted Media Extensions to adaptively stream protected content. WebCrypto hasn't been implemented in Chrome yet, so we're using a Netflix-developed PPAPI (Pepper Plugin API) plugin which provides these cryptographic operations for now. We will remove this last remaining browser plugin as soon as WebCrypto is available directly in the Chrome browser. At that point, we can begin testing our new HTML5 video player on Windows and OS X.

So Netflix has years to get this right. What scares me is if the joke is on me and they're serious about the timeframe. ;-)