It was reported earlier that Microsoft launches its new Silverlight and they’re now showing demo at National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference (as reported by Somasegar). What’s Microsoft Silverlight anyway?

According to its homepage, Microsoft Silverlight is  a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web. It is previously known as WPF/e (Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere), according to Loren.

This new technology is the answer of Microsoft to Adobe’s newly launched at the same venue, which is called the Adobe Media Player. It also clearly signifies the increase of the competition between Microsoft and Adobe on desktop.

Scoble give five insights (read here) why Microsoft’s Silverlight is important and it is even compared to Adobe’s Media Player. However, Long Zheng clarifies that: “Silverlight is not a video-player. Silverlight is not a YouTube competitor. Silverlight is technically not even new. WPF/E has had VC-1 video capabilities since last December, which is amazing in its own rights, but that’s not Silverlight as a whole. Silverlight is an (exciting) platform which has video playback capabilities, which allows for YouTube competitors to be developed.”

The Tim Sneath give us also 10 reasons why we might want to the Silverlight. Read it here.