In what is clearly a blow to Microsoft rival Silverlight, Adobe has managed to convince Nagravision’s OpenTV to integrate Adobe Flash Lite into the 111 million installed base of OpenTV set top middleware. Under certain conditions this would make it possible for Flash video from the internet to display on any TV the set top was driving.
Flash has been installed on set tops by hardware manufacturers and IPTV middleware companies before, but mostly for the benefits it gives in designing screens for the user interface using native flash designs. Now this has been extended to the version which runs FLV Flash video files.
The agreement is based on a longstanding relationship between the two companies and OpenTV is also joining Adobe’s Open Screen Project to define the TV profile and Open Screen requirements to help enable other video experiences than TV on television screens.
Of course if Microsoft was to offer the right incentives there’s nothing to stop OpenTV also installing Silverlight as well.
One application the release pointed at was offering overlay advertising and storing video advertising in Flash formats, to be triggered by the middleware.
The first commercial deployment of the new OpenTV Core2 middleware with integrated Adobe Flash support is expected to be targeted at the Japanese market in the second half of 2009.