Getting Started

Re: Re: NBC+Olympics+Silverlight 2.0= No Full screen mode?

Alan Cobb — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 02:56:24 GMT

Hi slyi,

>I'm surprised no one made a bookmarklet / favlet yet, to set the style to 100%.

Hmm. That's a great idea. I'd never done a bookmarklet before, but I just made one. It tests fine in both IE7 and FF2. I have added it to my blog article. For those who haven't used them before, a bookmarklet is a tiny Javascript program living in the href of a bookmark. Very useful.

BTW: One feature of the player that really rocks at 1600x1200 is the wall of 24 thumbnails you get in the "Highlights" view. I've uploaded a screen capture (286KB) of that at 1600x1200 in IE7. The thumbnails have enough detail that they really benefit from the big resolution. Actually, the highlights videos themselves (higher bit rates as Tom Taylor from MS pointed out) look impressive at 1600x1200.

Thanks for the tip slyi,

Alan Cobb
www.alancobb.com/blog (Silverlight blog)

Re: Re: NBC+Olympics+Silverlight 2.0= No Full screen mode?

slyi — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:21 GMT

Im surprised no one made a bookmarklet / favlet yet, to set the style to 100%.

Re: Re: NBC+Olympics+Silverlight 2.0= No Full screen mode?

Alan Cobb — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 19:51:56 GMT

Hi mypam,

>The silverlight is not a TV substition. [Silverlight is not a TV substitute].

Well according to this article by Will Zachmann there are a lot of people at Microsoft working to make Silverlight exactly that (at least long term). Below is a partial quote from Will's article:

"Breaking Broadcast
The common theme behind all this is an extremely bold and ambitious effort by Microsoft to supplant traditional TV video-distribution with a Web-based alternative model built on Silverlight. The essential idea is to offer everything currently available from your local cable company and much more -- not via channels on a traditional TV tuner but directly through a Web or Xbox game interface. If Microsoft succeeds in this effort, just who makes money and how they make it in TV distribution will change dramatically over the next few years."

Alan Cobb
www.alancobb.com/blog (Silverlight blog)

Re: NBC+Olympics+Silverlight 2.0= No Full screen mode?

Alan Cobb — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 18:16:36 GMT

For anyone who doesn't want to use the workarounds already described (Firefox 3's zoom-in mode works well), I have posted a blog article showing a simple 2-line CSS tweak that you can make to force the NBCOlympics.com player to fill the whole width of the IE7 browser window, regardless of how big your monitor is.

Please see:
http://www.alancobb.com/blog/2008/08/17/TweakingTheNBCOlympicscomSilverlightVideoPlayerToRunFullScreen.aspx

Alan Cobb
www.alancobb.com/blog (Silverlight blog)

Re: Re: Re: NBC+Olympics+Silverlight 2.0= No Full screen mode?

zambelli — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 06:12:09 GMT

Souleao, I've moved my reply to the other thread: http://silverlight.net/forums/p/22929/81101.aspx#81101

Re: Re: Re: NBC+Olympics+Silverlight 2.0= No Full screen mode?

Souleao — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:42:02 GMT

Could you also post something that tells how to stop the video from "improving" itself and then showing up blurry on my monitor. After a few minutes watching Olympics my screen freezes and I get a flash of a blurb that says I'm being updated for improved image viewing, and then when the video starts up again my screen is blurry and difficult to see. I don't need this type of improvement.

Re: Re: NBC+Olympics+Silverlight 2.0= No Full screen mode?

pdjplano — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:52:25 GMT

andrevieiradematos:
everybody (except americans theirselves) knows that american people don't care a lot about the world..... so i would like to point somethings for all of my overweight dumb and narcisist fellows

always amuses me when someone insults an entire country/group of people, what great form/manners!!

as to the full-screen aspect, it's definitely a mistake on the development teams' view of the issue, imo. when you are trying to highlight a technology, especially one going up against an established market leader like Flash, you should really put your best foot forward showing off the technology. a simple solution of having certain, key videos full-screen enabled would alleviate the design issues outlined and allow the user to experience the full power of the Silverlight platform. as it is, a decision was made across all the videos that limited them and hence, limited the 'pop' that people see in the technology. a shame, really, given how simple a solution is to the issue.

Re: Re: NBC+Olympics+Silverlight 2.0= No Full screen mode?

Omnius — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:58:11 GMT

I was aproaching this from a different viewpoint than you suggest. I too have been working with and learning Silverlight for months now. I'm actually banking on the fact that Microsoft succeeds with Silverlight, that is why I'm converting my company's main product over to using it. From that frame of mind I was really wanting them to put their best foot forward in the big debut with the Olympics site. I knew it was perfectly capable of going fullscreen because I had used the MIX08 site a lot to watch the recorded sessions. I was simply dissapointed when I went to check out the site and realized it was disabled and I personally couldn't think of a good reason for them to have done that from a technology point of view.

Re: Re: NBC+Olympics+Silverlight 2.0= No Full screen mode?

andrevieiradematos — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:41:55 GMT

I ended up in this discussion because i was searching for fullscreen in silverlight, more exactly about "how to make my app work fullscreen"

well, i'm a developer, and i use forums to help me developing software.... i usually read helpful and nice posts of programmers halping each other...

and what do i found here? people with really bad education and lack of respect that are frustrated because they can't watch the olympics in full screen..

i have to say: so what? how pathetic are your lives, so that you're angry over something really not important? i mean, you're not even paying!

off course, most of you are american (i suppose, because we're talking about nbc) and everybody (except americans theirselves) knows that american people don't care a lot about the world..... so i would like to point somethings for all of my overweight dumb and narcisist fellows:

- silverlight is not being developped to display video in full screen, it's something A LOT BIGGER AND COMPLEX. video display is just a really small part of it.. i've been working with it for the past 4 months doing a lot of other things (i never had to put a video in my silverlight apps)...

- silverlight 2 is in it's BETA version, meaning it's still being developed, and it's not in it's final shape...

- there are other countries around the world, where people don't have 22" lcd monitors...

- microsoft is a powerful company with lots of power to "decide" new technologies... so don't say you won't use silverlight again.. it's a waist of time... you are goint to eventually

but ok, i think microsoft made a huge mistake: it underestimated the "dumbness" of the end users... they should not have advertised "full screen video" and they have had to put a huge note telling that silverlight 2 is in beta version, so problems may occur

Re: Re: NBC+Olympics+Silverlight 2.0= No Full screen mode?

TWallace — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 04:29:10 GMT

I agree that the lack of full screen mode is an incredibly poor decision, but what they do offer is not even in the same league as YouTube. YouTube video quality is horrible, plus I'd rather not watch the Olympics in 10 minute segments like YouTube would have. I've watched a few videos in the Silverlight player, some of which were nearly 2 hours long and what I saw was fantastic video quality with no interruption.

Re: Re: NBC+Olympics+Silverlight 2.0= No Full screen mode?

dude243man — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 04:18:28 GMT

2.) there are some restrictions placed on the usage of full screen video by the IOC. That also factored into the design of this video player.

This is probably the only reason they don't have full screen in the Olympic video player. I signed on just to say the lack of a full screen mode is incredibly thickheaded and makes Microsoft and NBC and the IOC look very incompetent and archaic. Why even use Silverlight? Why not just have NBC staffers post videos to Youtube where they actually have full screen capability?

Re: Re: NBC+Olympics+Silverlight 2.0= No Full screen mode?

kitemike — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:08:58 GMT

Tom,

I believe a quick fix is available for IE. In IE, press F11 for full screen mode. I zoomed the video by 200% (from combobox in the status bar) to fill my 28" (twenty-eight) Viewsonic monitor (1920x1200). I scrolled the video into view and pushed the chrome away. The video is great!

The only problem seems to be the Javascript (or SL) in the HTML page wants to reset the scrollbar every 20 seconds, when the banner disappears from view. Could you have NBC move the banner to the left-hand side of the HTML page to prevent the scrolling?

Mike

Re: NBC+Olympics+Silverlight 2.0= No Full screen mode?

MichaelTOC — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:53:05 GMT

There is one more thing that seems to contradict some of those arguments where no full screen = better quality. Shouldn't switching to full screen theoretically improve watching experience? After all - the process can be prioritized and more ‘focused’ on decoding the video to entire viewport while de-prioritizing all other windows that could cause slow downs . This includes browser windows, worst case with flashy banners etc. Sure you can’t make up for number of pixels but still. This should be left totally for user decision. All those workarounds with FireFox, which is pain, just ridicule the technology in front of those people who stumble upon it first time. What was the outcome of your meeting with NBC? Any go-ahead, write that one-line of code and make thousands of users happy? Thanks…

Re: Re: Re: Re: NBC+Olympics+Silverlight 2.0= No Full screen mode?

HasPotential — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 06:55:04 GMT

Created account just to second Kingces's suggestion... At the given bandwidth the quality seems just fine to me using the Firefox 3.0 workaround (good thing we all have firefox). Take the plunge... the "enlarged video" mode sucks.

It's sad when the History channel has full screen videos w/ Flash and Microsoft won't even step up to the plate with their Silverlight Olympics expo.

If you're truly worried about bandwidth issues, give it a couple more days with the current set-up and I'd wager that viewership will have dropped so low that bandwidth will be the least of your concerns.

... almost forgot... I may be mistaken, but isn't one of the great features of Silverlight supposed to be that it can dynamically resize video (by the end user)?... if this is true, why not let the user decide the size and make their own judgement call about video quality? (which will be good anyway) You guys seem to be missing out on an excellent opportunity to showcase here by limiting the functionality so much. If you're only goal was to get the Silverlight plugin on machines, couldn't you just send it out w/ a Windows update??

Re: Re: Re: NBC+Olympics+Silverlight 2.0= No Full screen mode?

kingces95 — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 05:24:49 GMT

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

Tom, three more questions:

Question 1: What are the "limitations of the constraints around this specific project" that prevent using fullscreen? Developers who are evaluating using Silverlight over Flash would like to know. You say under "most circumstances" it's easy to enable full screen. Under what circumstances is it not easy to enable? Is there a white paper or MSDN post describing the limitations?

Question 2: What test, design and development work does Microsoft expect developers building Silverlight applications to do before they can enable Fullscreen? They need to know so they can compare that matrix to Flash. Right now your developers are asking themselves, "If Microsoft can't even run the fullscreen test matrix what chance do I have?" What is your response? Or is it the scale of the Olympics is the problem? In which case the question is in what dimensions does Microsoft Silverlight fail to scale? And where is the white paper and where is the MSDN post describing the scale limitations?

Question 3: Why not take this whole episode as an opportunity to show the world and your developers how easy it is to enable fullscreen by throwing the switch right in the middle of the Olympics? If there are bugs to be found at this scale when else are you expecting to flesh them out? Your developers expect you to find and fix those bugs at Olympics scale so they have confidence that when their product is under heavy load it'll work. If you don't want to distribute full screen to everyone then limit the distribution to folks that find this page. Add a disclaimer if you like. Say that this fullscreen version of the browser is not fully tested and there may be bugs that'll be reported and fixed. Prove to your developers just how easy it is to enable and just how robust your technology is! Put your money where your posts are! Are you trying to compete with Flash or what?! Come on! Throw the switch. Why not?