NBC Sports among the initial group of media producers to focus on the Silverlight 3 platform

Microsoft is releasing Silverlight 3 Platform including support with Visual Studio Pro Edition and  Expression software programming environments. Microsoft will be offering a Visual Studio Pro and Expression bundle for $999. Included with Expression is a rapid prototyping product called Sketchflow. Expression 3 is due out in 30 days and will include Expression Blend, Expression Web design, Expression Encoder (video encoding) and Expression Designer (illustration design).

NBC Sports used Silverlight in the 2008 Olympics is announcing its intent on using Silverlight for online video delivery across all of its sporting programs.

"As we look forward to the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver as well as other major championships in 2010, we will be using Silverlight as the preferred technology to deliver the best in next-generation online high-definition video experiences," said NBC's Perkins Miller, senior vice president for digital media, in a statement released by Microsoft. NBC has used Silverlight and Microsoft Internet Information Services Smooth Streaming for its "Live and Wimbledon" video presentation.

The new Silverlight product will support offline content as well as online, 3D and hardware graphics acceleration. Microsoft says that it has made great inroads with its Silverlight 2 version and states that it is installed on 1 out of 3 PC’s. Adobe has the majority share of this market though. We’ll have to see how well Microsoft does with this next version.