Netflix has announced plans to adopt the emerging HTML5 video format in place of Silverlight. The subscription service has been exploring new plugins since Microsoft confirmed that it would end support for Silverlight in 2021.
The move will also solve several issues for Netflix, such as the limited support for browser-based plugins on mobile devices.
“We’re interested to solve these problems as we move to our next generation of video playback on the Web,” said Netflix in a blog post.
“Over the last year, we’ve been collaborating with other industry leaders on three W3C initiatives which are positioned to solve this problem of playing premium video content directly in the browser without the need for browser plugins such as Silverlight.”
Netflix has already begun testing what it calls ‘HTML5 Premium Video Extensions’, but is yet to announce when Silverlight will be dropped entirely.
