Microsoft’s cross-platform multimedia engine Silverlight 1.0 has only been shipping since September, yet they’ve gone ahead and announced a v2 beta is on the way:

Silverlight 1.0 focused on enabling rich media scenarios in a browser, and supports a JavaScript/AJAX programming model. We are shortly going to release the first public beta of Silverlight 2, which will be a major update of Silverlight that focuses on enabling Rich Internet Application (RIA) development. Silverlight 2 does not require the .NET Framework to be installed on a computer in order to run. The Silverlight setup download includes everything necessary to enable all the above features on a vanilla Mac OSX or Windows machine. The Beta1 release of Silverlight 2 is 4.3MB in size, and takes 4-10 seconds to install on a machine that doesn’t already have it.

In other Silverlight news, my pals over at jkOnTheRun noticed that Silverlight is installed with Microsoft Office 2008 on OS X. (I’m still waiting for my copy…)

Why should you care? Netflix says 2008 is the year their movie streaming service comes to OS X. They currently utilize Microsoft DRM and demonstrated a Silverlight client last spring…

Looks like DivX has given up on Stage6 - it’s just too costly to operate… While they didn’t lay out exactly what those expenses are, in addition to the obvious bandwidth and hosting requirements of video, I assume policing content and the potential lawsuits (or costly licensing deals) were factors.

[...] the continued operation of Stage6 is a very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to continue to provide. [...] we tried really hard to find a way to keep Stage6 alive, either as its own private entity or by selling it to another company. Ultimately neither of those two scenarios was possible, and we made the hard decision to turn the lights off and cease operation of the service.

Stage6 closes this Thursday, February 28th. Unfortunately, for the same reasons, it’s likely we’ll see more of this… acquisitions (such as Revver and Maven) and shuttering of web video properties.

Demand for Hulu access was pretty high on my last post - and we managed to serve well over 50 beta invites. While I appreciate folks chipping in to help out fellow readers by giving away some of their invites, I figured it’d be more efficient to reach out directly to the Hulu team for support - and they’ve provided 100 200 accounts to distribute. So if you’re still in need of an account, leave a comment and I’ll start filling orders tomorrow. First come, first served.

Apple has followed Amazon Unbox’s lead in offering weekly 99 movie rental specials. Call it a loss leader - these sales reinforce their respective movie rental service offerings. When we still had the bedroom 32″ SDTV, we often enjoyed Amazon’s discounted films via TiVo. (Though we haven’t enjoyed watching them on our HDTVs - letter and pillar-boxes? Please!) It’s not yet clear if iTunes will offer multiple weekly selections like Amazon (did), or if the sale will be limited to one select feature as it is this week (The Hours).

Quite a few seemed to think today would be the day Microsoft and Netflix jointly announce a (new) Xbox 360 video service at the Game Developers Conference. However, I wasn’t optomistic. And it didn’t happen. While I’d like to see a revitalized Live Marketplace and expect it’d be good for both companies, it’ll take some time to get from survey to service… And having read some cagey commentary from Netflix’s corporate rep, it may very well be on the table.

Place your virtual wager… Which arrives first: Gears of War 2 or Xbox Netflix video streaming?

Coming Soon: Apple TV v. Vudu v. Xbox 360

Yesterday’s other big news was the beta release of DVD Jon’s DoubleTwist software - that aims to be the Swiss army knife of multimedia conversion, sharing, and syncing. The feature (rightfully) garnering the most attention is the behind-the-scenes conversion of DRM-ed iTunes into unprotected MP3s for playlist synchronization onto non-iPods. Though, being a video geek my first experiments were with TiVo content…

On a fairly clean Windows XP install (TiVo Desktop, minimal codecs), DoubleTwist was unable to play TiVoToGo content. In fact, the program didn’t see the video files (or directory) until I changed the file extension from .tivo to .mpeg. And as you can see above, once found, DoubleTwist doesn’t utilize TiVo’s .dll during playback. I was interested in seeing what would happen when syncing TiVo video to my iPhone and Nokia N95 as a possible free replacement for TiVo Desktop Plus, but I discovered device synchronization is currently limited to audio files.

Speaking of that N95, DoubleTwist immediately identified the photos and videos I’ve shot - had I wanted to share them with someone. Though, that brings up a problem (for me) with this software. I imagine DVD Jon is a nice guy, but the required online registration and service connectivity is a major turn off. I want to convert, sync, and possibly share privately.