Due to pressure from studios, Lovefilm will no longer be using Flash to stream online video. The European rental and streaming service announced yesterday that without moving to the more DRM-friendly Silverlight, it would “suddenly have next-to-no films to stream online.” Flash will run alongside Silverlight until the first week of January, and streaming to devices won’t be affected. However, this change marks the end of Lovefilm for Linux, one of the few advantages the service had over its American analogue Netflix, which has used Silverlight exclusively for some time. Lovefilm’s parent company, Amazon, still uses Flash for its online streaming.
Lovefilm kills Flash for movie streaming, switches to Silverlight
European movie service Lovefilm is replacing Flash video streaming with Silverlight due to pressure from studios.
European movie service Lovefilm is replacing Flash video streaming with Silverlight due to pressure from studios.
is a senior tech and policy editor focused on online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered virtual and augmented reality, the history of computing, and more for The Verge since 2011.
With Microsoft indicating that it may abandon Silverlight after the latest release, it's unclear how long Lovefilm will be able to use it, or what the future holds. Lovefilm calls HTML5 "an open-sourced solution that is still maturing" with no services "that would allow us to stream content securely," but Netflix began seriously discussing streaming through HTML5 as early as December of last year, and is helping to hammer out a secure standard.
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