You would think from the noise at NAB in the last few days that Adobe had managed a major and very sudden victory in getting Flash, along with its video playing capabilities, onto TV sets and set tops. But the victory is far from sudden, it has been coming a long time.
Since the early days of FLV files, and the usurping of PC and internet leadership over the equivalent Microsoft video format, the integration onto other screens has been pretty much assumed.
What all the stories appeared to say was that finally Adobe Flash was on chips from NXP, Broadcom, Sigma Designs and STMicro and that from there they could dominate the digital home. What the stories should have said was that there have been a variety of versions of Flash on chips from these companies, but a new version from Adobe would optimize viewing on TV screens, include HD and harmonize all these efforts.
IPTV has been using Flash for years, about 3 to 4 years to be precise, while about 300 million of the previous generation of handsets had old Flash Lite and now over 500 million have the new improved version.
All of this is just what Adobe anticipated when it came up with the Open Screen Project last year, and when it managed to attract all that heavyweight firepower to the Project.
And this is not only about IPTV TV screens, but more importantly it is about cable, with these chip companies responsible for the major efforts behind the Tru2Way devices which will open up cable to interactive capabilities, which Cablelabs is pioneering and which Comcast is already installing.
Sigma is a leading set top chip maker but even more so a DVD chip supplier: Broadcom has tried to wrest this role from Sigma with its Blu-ray controller chips and STMicro and NXP have more or less kept up with them, partly through dominance of European DVB-T set top chips. Sigma, Broadcom and STMicro also make the chips which drive the Microsoft Mediaroom, and many other, IPTV set tops.
It is the fact that Adobe can get all of these manufacturers on the same page, and put their names to the same announcement at the show which is most impressive and if you add it to the recent wins where Flash has been added to the Texas Instruments OMAP chipset, and before that to the ARM core designs back in November to facilitate putting full Flash Player 10 functionality and its AIR cross-runtime platform onto the processor design which dominates global handsets. Last May
Adobe had all of the top five handset vendors pledging support – Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, LG and Sony Ericsson ‘ with mobile chipmakers, Intel, ARM, Marvell and Qualcomm also signing up.
Back in January Adobe had already said very clearly that is was putting Flash onto the Intel CE 3100, the chip upon which the world’s biggest chip maker is building its bid to dominate internet content on the TV.
The two said at the time they were working to port and optimize Flash Player and Flash Video, promising to support web-based video viewing though Intel-based set-top boxes, BluRay players and digital TVs with shipments around mid-year, so adding Intel to the roster of companies that had just announced support was more of a history lesson than news, but it remains significant.
Now on the TV screen Adobe has also added support from Atlantic Records, Comcast, Disney, Netflix and even The New York Times to support this new TV version of Flash which will ship in the second half of 2009.
This is not a full list by any stretch of the imagination, of all the companies that need to get behind the Adobe format and Microsoft is still trying to build partners for its Silverlight copycat technology, but Adobe is clearly almost ready to claim that its de facto PC victory has now extended to both phones and digital TV sets.
There still needs to be some kind of accommodation between Adobe and the Yahoo TV Widget technology which Intel and other influential players are offering to control the playing and loading of internet video on TV sets, as well as with the major TV manufacturers like Sony and Samsung, which each have their own initiatives in bringing internet video to their devices, so it’s not quite yet a slam dunk for Adobe and many device manufacturers will want to support as many formats as possible. And of course Apple on the iPhone is still no fan of Adobe.
At the show Adobe also announced a new software framework for building media players, code-named ‘Strobe.’ This is a small step, but it makes it easy for anyone in content which wants to compete with say the Hulus of this world, to create their own media player, with their own branding and their own advertising facilitated, or other business model. It’s part of the eco-system that Adobe has to provide in order to dominate.
‘With Strobe, we’re delivering an open framework that enables media companies to focus on their core competency, creating great content that people want to see, instead of developing their own video players from scratch,’ said Jim Guerard, vice president and general manager of Dynamic Media at Adobe. Adobe has tried to position this as a ‘standard,’ primarily because Microsoft is at constant pains to point out that its own system rests on standards, while the Adobe format is proprietary. Strobe will be available, at no charge, in the second half of 2009.
Adobe also announced an expended ‘strategic alliance’ with Brightcove to facilitate tools integration around video workflows. Brightcove also said that it would back Strobe and offer it to clients.
The Brightcove collaboration will focus on four strategic areas, video delivery, content protection (we thought Adobe already had its own DRM?) integration of Brightcove services with the Adobe Creative Suite and they will work together to ensure interoperability between Strobe and the Brightcove online video platform.