I will be embedding a video to my asp.net mvc website. A video on the homepage which will help people to better understand the website. I have never done this. Can anyone tell me whats the best way of doing it. Flash or silverlight??
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1There sure are a lot of Stus in this question... – Samantha Branham Nov 05 '09 at 16:28
4 Answers
I've used JW FLV Media Player. I was pretty happy with it, and it's easy to use. Flash-based.

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My suggestion would be to go with Flash and to achieve what you're looking for, utilize swfobject. It's really quite simple to use and has a bunch of options that will be useful when you get more used to using video.

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I have had pretty good success using silverlight with the Silverlight 2 Video Player as an example. However, it depends on what your requirements are.
Pros to Silverlight:
- Performs Video Streaming very well
- Easier to develop/customize if you are a .NET developer
- Works on a variety of browser and platforms
Cons to Silverlight:
- Does not support every video media type (the example above only plays .WMV files, Silverlight in general supports .WMV and .MP4)
- Is not installed on as many client machines (less penetration)
- Is not as well known (users may be reluctant to install it compared to Flash)
- Is not as popular so there are less solutions/resources out there
Here is another discussion on the topic.
I would go with flash for only one reason: the 99% (or whatever it is today) installed base.
Then go with swfobject or JW FLV Media Player as suggested in the other answers. There is also a jQuery plugin floating around somewhere that helps deal with flash video on a site.

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