MLB Brightens Microsoft Silverlight Player

Microsoft’s new Silverlight browser plug-in media player has a prime spot on the websites of Major League Baseball.

Sites like the New York Yankees and for MLB itself prompt visitors to grab a copy of Silverlight, which is Microsoft’s answer to competitive cross-platform media players like Adobe’s Flash.

Once in place, visitors can view video highlights like Barry Bonds’ 756th home run from MLB’s ‘Silverlight-powered page. Microsoft said its Silverlight plug-in will work on Windows XP, Vista, and Server 2003 when running IE7.

Older stuff like IE6, or Firefox 1.5 or 2, on Windows 2000 hasn’t received support yet.

Microsoft’s Silverlight plug-in works on Windows or Mac, though Linux isn’t supported as an operating system. Like Adobe, Microsoft sees a future where much of the business of content distribution will go to the company that can give the best assurances about protecting copyrighted material.

A product called Silverlight Streaming should emerge as an option from Microsoft for those content owners. Microsoft described it as an optional paid turnkey offering for supporting DRM-encoded video.