Moving to HTML5 Premium Media

Microsoft announced the end of life of Silverlight 5 in 2012, some devs predicted it in 2011, Netflix announced dropping it in 2013. So there aren't many Silverlight developers caught unaware now... and Microsoft has said Silverlight will be supported for 10 years, back then.

This page is more about what Microsoft hopes Netflix and others will do to support Windows 10 than anything on Silverlight.

>> I almost feel sorry for all those Silverlight developers out there who dedicated a lot of time to this

Same. My first job out of Uni was at a Windows shop, developing Silverlight and ASP "Line of Business" apps. Many of the devs there were fully bought-in to the MS ecosystem, and wouldn't hear of any doubts or worries over the future of their stack.

Glad I got out of that gig when I did.

HTML5 plus a Windows-only DRM plugin.

Oddly enough... Where a flash plugin was highly unstable for me, the Mono version of Silverlight was highly stable, at least from my personal experience. So I'm personally saddened not to see Silverlight heading anywhere. HTML5 still feels clunky most of the time for me, it either doesn't work, or unnecessarily wastes system resources for me.