A day earlier than expected, Microsoft has launched its third edition of Silverlight and its SDK. As Ars Technica notes, some of the bigger improvements on the user side are GPU hardware acceleration and new codec support including H.264, AAC, and MPEG-4. If you're looking to give it a spin, there's a Smooth Streaming demo available that, as the name suggests, does a pretty good job of streaming HD video with little stutter, even when skipping around. If you've got Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 6, Safari 3 or anything fresher, hit up the read link to get the update.

[Via Ars Technica]

Read - Download Page
Read - Smooth Streaming demo

The Beijing Olympics broadcast benefited greatly from high quality streams available on the NBCOlympics.com website, and it looks like the 2010 Games in Vancouver will be no different. To that end, Microsoft's released server side enhancements like Smooth Streaming technology for adaptive streaming with Silverlight to keep the video streams moving smoothly, and even enable DVR-like features in a live stream without requiring dedicated video servers, all so viewers can get smooth 720p throughout the event. By then Silverlight 3 should be out of beta, which promises support for up to 1080p resolution, native playback of MP4 formats like h.264 and hardware graphics acceleration. Honestly we'd expect nothing less, and while word is CTV, HSN and others will be among the first to take advantage, we're waiting for Netflix to pick up the baton and deliver browser based PQ that rises to the level of Xbox 360 and other players, plus more HD.