At a Silverlight event today, Microsoft gave a first look at the next version of the company’s development platform. Silverlight 5 will be a more complete, more capable development platform, and it should be a faster one, too, with hardware acceleration of various features. What the announcement didn’t do is to clarify Microsoft’s future development direction any better.

One of Silverlight’s success stories is as a platform for building streaming media applications. Silverlight 5 will strengthen the product in this area, including hardware-accelerated H.264 playback, “TrickPlay” support to allow fast-forward playback with pitch-corrected audio, and the ability to disable the screensaver during video playback.

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Silverlight 5 unveiled: many new features, direction still vague