NAB ― Attempting to hasten the spread of rich Internet video and animation onto consumer TV screens, Adobe Systems (ADBE) today debuted a new version of its popular Flash platform designed for television sets, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players and other home consumer electronics devices.
Dubbed “The Adobe Flash Platform for the Digital Home,” the new software – announced at the National Association of Broadcasters conference in Las Vegas – will allow viewers to see TV programs and Web content on the same screen, for example, and to shift quickly between television programming to Web stuff. Another advance: the entire library of YouTube videos will now be available on TV.
The platform is a leg of the Adobe-created “Open Screen Project,” a “broad industry initiative” that was launched a year ago to push Flash onto multiple consumer electronics devices. AFPFTDH “will dramatically change the way we view content on televisions,” David Wadhwani, GM of Adobe’s platform business unit, said in a statement.
The most widely used technology for pushing animation and video across the Web, Flash is used to power around 80 percent of online videos, according to comScore. Spreading it to TVs and other home screens will broaden the market for Flash while bringing the day of fully converged Web-and-television content a step closer. Flash is already enabled for mobile devices and is seen as a powerful vehicle for the rise of mobile video.
Microsoft (MSFT) has its own platform for Web-based animation and video, called Silverlight. So far the software giant has concentrated on equipping computers with enhanced media capabilities rather than bringing rich Web content onto the TV set.
Adobe, which has already lined up an extensive set of content providers, chipmakers, and equipment manufacturers to back the platform, said that devices with the new version of Flash will be available in the second half of this year.
