The initial release of Microsoft media player for the browser lacked many of the features Flash had offered for years. Version 1.0 was really little more than a dressed up beta and, while the current release is an improvement, it still lacks many advanced capabilities that have seen Flash set the standard.

Silverlight 3.0, released as a beta recently, promises to put Microsoft’s player on a nearly level playing field with Adobe’s Flash framework. Silverlight 3.0 brings a staggering amount of improvements to the table with new APIs, audio codecs and features for video such as Smooth Streaming, H264 and AAC, and hardware-based graphics acceleration.

But how easy is it to develop in Silverlight? And how much has Microsoft closed the feature gap with Adobe’s Flash platform? The Register took the Silverlight 3.0 beta for a spin.