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Now TV hobbled on Chrome as Google ditches Silverlight support

Google has finally canned support for Silverlight, meaning Now TV customers can’t stream their favourite shows and movies using Chrome. 

Whenever Now TV customers try to stream movies from Chrome for Windows or Mac, they’ll be greeted with a pop-up message prompting them to download Firefox or either Internet Explorer or Safari, if they’ve not done so already. 

Alternatively, if you’re using Windows 8.1, you can download the standalone Now TV app instead of accessing the service through a browser. 

Game of Thrones season 5 hitting Sky and Now TV on April 13Prime Instant Video and Amazon Instant Video customers will now also have to either download Adobe Flash if they want to continue watching Transparent, Vikings and the rest through Chrome. Blinkbox customers will need to resort to using a browser that supports Microsoft Silverlight. 

The search giant announced last year that it was going to withdraw support for Microsoft’s software. Like Flash, Silverlight allows for media to be streamed in web browsers via plug ins. 

While Silverlight is obviously used by a number of applications, Microsoft announced that it would stop supporting the software in October 2021. This has prompted Netflix to prematurely ditch Silverlight for Chrome and Safari and adopt an HTML5-based solution. 

In plain English, this means you can now stream Netflix natively through browsers like Chrome without having to worry about making sure you’re up to date with the latest version of Silverlight, Flash or anything else. 

It’s unclear as to when (or even if) Now TV, Blinkbox and Prime Instant Video will fully adopt HTML5, or when Chrome users, who understandably might not want two browsers, will be able to stream their favourite shows again. 

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