Here comes the next format war
A TV-ready version of Adobe’s Flash is coming to TVs and mobile phones near you, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said Monday at the National Association of Broadcasters’ convention in Las Vegas.
According to the New York Times, Flash already resides on a whopping 98% of computers and 80% of Web videos are viewed using it. Some 40% of mobile phones shipped last year came packaged with Flash.
If things were simple, everyone might just agree right now to standardize on Flash, so that content creators could just get on with the business of putting their content online, on mobile phones, on portable media devices and soon, on TVs. But things are never simple, so Flash doesn’t get to just, er, flash in and sweep up.
Apple isn’t thrilled about Flash, saying it’s too big and takes up too much battery and processing power. With the iPhone rapidly becoming the phone of choice, that’s one big naysayer.
And just as it does with most software/computer/Internet-related things, Microsoft also could stand in Adobe’s way. Microsoft’s been aggressive with its new video streaming standard, Silverlight, which has been used recently by Netflix, the BBC, CBS and NBC during the Olympics, reports the Times.
Microsoft says Silverlight 2.0 is on 300 million PCs, and that it better supports live, HD video in 1080 p resolution, which means it could easily be used to bring Internet video to HDTVs.
My advice to these companies is this: Fight about it if you must but don’t take too long. Disputes over formats – see VHS v. Beta and Blu-Ray v. HD Video – put off consumers, slow adoption and spending and thus hurt the industry.
scole commented:
Like it or not Apple hasa huge advantage here and will more than likely pull HTML5 into the forefront. with the iPhone and iPad gaining more and more share in mobile divices, and more and more docking stations with HD out to TV's for their products, I would not be surprised to see Apple leading the front with HTML5.
Bill Sheppard commented:
There is no need for a format war - it's already been fought, and for embedded devices Java won. In addition to being actively installed on most current desktop PC's, Java is in 90% of all cellphones worldwide. Adobe's 40% number for Flash is a lot less impressive if you consider that the vast majority of those are in Nokia phones, which has limited US presence. Java also forms the basis of digital TV standards globally, including tru2way, Blu-ray Disc, MHP, GEM-IPTV, and others.
Yes, Flash offers a compelling set of tools which allows typical web developers to create lightweight apps relatively easily. This doesn't come for free, however. The Flash runtime requires more hardware graphics support than most current set-top boxes and Blu-ray Disc players offer, and it's unlikely that operators can have a reasonable expectation of Flash being available consistently across their user base (since it's not required by the OpenCable spec and therefore may not be available on many retail or leased set-tops).
Further, much work is underway (both within and external to Sun, the inventor of Java) in making Java application development more accessible to non-programmer developers. We've already seen the emergence of powerful tools for Blu-ray Disc authoring targeting the creative community; most of these tools are readily adaptable to tru2way development.
Finally, Java is far more flexible in its ability to support a broad range of applications. For instance, several vendors have available tru2way EPG's which incorporate a [Java-based] DLNA server to allow DVR content to be consumed elsewhere within the house. Building a DLNA server as a Flash application would be exceptionally challenging.
nebben commented:
I think this makes it even more likely for what I've outlined here, Societrends dot com.