Microsoft is set to take on YouTube in the battle for online video viewing supremacy, siliconrepublic.com has revealed.It is working with other firms to create a similar video-sharing site to rival the immensely popular YouTube network.
Tim Sneath, group manager for the Silverlight developer team at Microsoft, revealed at the Irish Microsoft Technology conference that it wanted to take video-sharing to a "different level" and deliver 720p broadcast-quality clips online.
Silverlight is a cross-platform, cross-border runtime, which helps merge the new wave of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), delivering low-bandwidth consumption content with high resolution.
"We're working with a large number of different partners, going after firms with large numbers of unique visitors a month, trying to figure out how to work with companies that want to deliver these rich internet experiences to their customers and have them take this technology and move it forward," Mr Sneath revealed.
"We've been overwhelmed with interest in Silverlight. Out of the 400 developers here today, about 300 were listening to the Silverlight presentation. What's very attractive to people is just the power of what it can do."
To demonstrate the capabilities of Silverlight for RIAs a 70 piece jigsaw of live video was moved around and manipulated.
Meanwhile, Taiwan-born YouTube co-founder Steve Chen has revealed that the company is considering plans to launch a Chinese-language version of the site.
