[LINK] Flash for TV & phones

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Times today:


On Monday, Adobe’s chief executive, Shantanu Narayen, will announce that 
Adobe is extending Flash to the television screen. 

He expects TVs and set-top boxes that support the Flash format to start 
selling later this year.

For consumers, a long overhyped notion is a step closer to reality: 
viewing a video clip or Internet application on a TV or mobile phone.

For Hollywood studios and other content creators, a single format for Web 
video is even more enticing.

In 2005, Adobe acquired Macromedia, the originator of Flash, and expanded 
from making software to create and share digital documents, like Adobe 
Acrobat and the PDF file format, to dominating the budding market of 
tools to create online graphics and video. 

According to Adobe, Flash is now on 98 percent of all computers, and 
about 80 percent of Web videos are viewed using it. (eg, Facebook, 
YouTube and Hulu.com etc)

Adobe says Flash was installed on 40 percent of cellphones shipped last 
year, and it recently announced efforts to increase that penetration by 
abolishing the licensing fees it was charging handset makers, much as it 
offers the Flash player free to consumers and video sites like YouTube.

Adobe makes money on Flash by selling software to help companies create 
and deliver Flash content to the Web.

One company standing in Adobe’s way is Microsoft. Its rival to Flash, 
called Silverlight, is used by Netflix and the BBC, and by NBC last year 
to stream the Olympics. 

Microsoft says the second version of Silverlight has been installed on 
300 million PCs since it became available six months ago. It also claims 
that Silverlight better supports live, high-definition video in what is 
called 1080p resolution, which is paramount to bringing Internet content 
to large HDTVs .. Adobe executives say the new Flash for televisions will 
support such high-definition video.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/technology/20adobe.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

--

Cheers,
Stephen