Introducing .NET 4.0: with Visual Studio 2010

14.16. Media

One of Silverlight's biggest strengths is its media functionality. Silverlight has been used to stream media content on a number of high-profile sites such as the 2008 Beijing Olympics on NBC, Blockbuster Video, Netflix, and UK TV channel ITV.

Silverlight supports these formats:

• Windows Media audio and video

• MP3 audio

• AAC

• AVC

• H.264/MPEG

• HD formats (introduced in Silverlight 3.0)

Silverlight also supports a great feature called adaptive streaming that varies the quality (bit rate) of the media stream depending on the user's available bandwidth to obtain the best experience possible.

It's very easy to add video functionality to your application, so let's create a simple video player:

1. Create a new folder called Media in your project.

2. Right-click, ...