Flash on TVs and set-top boxes
A long while ago, I blogged about Adobe’s Open Screen Project, which is a big consortium pushing Flash onto as many devices as possible. Well, here appears to be some of the first fruit of it:
Adobe® Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) and Intel Corporation today announced plans to collaborate on the development to port and optimize Adobe® Flash® technology for the Intel® Media Processor CE 3100. This effort is expected to provide consumers with richer and more seamless Web-based and video viewing experiences through advanced Intel-based cable set-top boxes, Blu-ray Disc players, digital TVs and retail connected AV devices….
They go on to mention plans to ship this chip within 2009, as well as an initiative around Air. We’ll see what comes of this… Intel has to get that chip adopted, after all.
In the meantime, I also noticed over the holidays that Microsoft is beta testing a new download center that requires Silverlight — that’s a way to push plugin adoption right there…! Of course, they also push it via pop-up on Microsoft’s front page… the war continues.
5 Responses to “Flash on TVs and set-top boxes”
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Now if they can get Flash on my iPhone I’ll be happy.
I don’t mean to start a Flash vs. Silverlight war, but does anyone else see Silverlight as a solution looking for a problem?
Flash essentially evolved at a time when JavaScript was the (painful) norm for webpage animation and interactivity. Compared to the alternative, it was a godsend. Since then, it has become something more that works well (even if Apple insists it’s too inefficient to be run on the iPhone).
Then Microsoft comes out of nowhere with Silverlight. On the one hand, it’s a welcome replacement for ActiveX, but so was Flash. It’s hard to see Silverlight as anything other than Microsoft trying to get in on a market that Adobe has cornered for a long time. Otherwise, it doesn’t have a compelling reason to exist.
As a user, I resent this. Sure, Microsoft’s welcome to a piece of the pie, and competition is healthy for innovation, but competing standards are a nightmare for users. Flash video became so prominent because it was a single solution, multiplatform video codec. You didn’t have to worry about MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV, QT, and which player could use which codec — just use a Flash applet (and since everyone has Flash) it will just work.
It’s even more painful because I use Linux at work and on my laptop. I haven’t heard any mention of Microsoft developing an open source Silverlight VM — is Linux going to be left out in the cold again?
Overall, I just see this as yet another attempt by Microsoft to develop and enforce a monopoly, hurting the consumer along the way.
EDIT: I shouldn’t give Adobe so much credit. Macromedia did all of the work developing Flash and making it popular. Adobe just picked it up after the one-hit wonder went out of business.
There’s Moonlight, the Linux implementation of Silverlight, officially supported by Microsoft.
Competition is a very good thing. Flash, for all the progress it has made with Flex, still doesn’t have the maturity of .NET. One of Silverlight’s opportunities is that it is very appealing for .NET developers who wouldn’t touch ActionScript with a 10-foot pole.
The result will ideally be that A) Flash is pushed to enable the building of more robust, maintainable large scale applications and B) that the Microsoft stack will be pushed to be friendlier and more open for artists. Both of these, despite what each camp says, would be radical improvements. Such cultural shifts would happen much more slowly without direct competition.
take care
Danc.
I would describe it instead as MS fighting to hold a key piece of the software market that threatens to usurp the place of operating systems to some largish degree.