Adobe Pushing For Flash TVs 345
Drivintin writes "In a move that should make cable companies nervous, Adobe announces they are going to push a Flash that runs directly on TVs. 'Adobe Systems, which owns the technology and sells the tools to create and distribute it, wants to extend Flash's reach even further. On Monday, Adobe's chief executive, Shantanu Narayen, will announce at the annual National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas that Adobe is extending Flash to the television screen. He expects TVs and set-top boxes that support the Flash format to start selling later this year.' With the ability to run Hulu, YouTube and others, the question of dropping your cable becomes a little bit more reasonable."
NO (Score:2, Insightful)
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!
We need Free and Open Media Standards.
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Re:NO (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:NO (Score:5, Insightful)
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Current feeds will be going nowhere. Adobe is just throwing their hat into the ring.
Re:NO (Score:5, Informative)
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You don't have to wait for a few hours. Just play a flash game that displays a lot of sprites. At some amount of onscreen content, all of a sudden the framerate collapses to near-zero and the symptoms you mentioned occur.
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The day I can plug in a tuner card or TV set or anything else directly into the digital cable feed and have the thing work without CableCARD or other such nonsense is the day that digital cable becomes "open."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I run Gnash on Ubuntu 9.04... on my EeePC... 900... in Firefox... watching YouTube videos... just fine... and it suffers from not having support for realtime audio in the Linux kernel.
Or they could, like Adobe (I-D-I-O-T-S-!), let it consume 100% CPU...
Re:NO (Score:5, Informative)
Money... (Score:3, Insightful)
Put their money where their mouth is?
And yes, they can. Sun open sourced Java, and had a few libraries which had to be rewritten, as third parties owned the code -- that ended up being nowhere near all of the standard libraries. Are you really saying third parties own all of the renderer?
Even Microsoft pays a few people to work on Moonlight, because they want to have a competing, open player. And ATI and nVidia seem to ultimately want to completely replace their proprietary Linux drivers with open ones, tho
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Here you have it in PDF, the full video specs, straifght from www.adobe.com; http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flv/pdf/video_file_format_spec_v9.pdf [adobe.com]
Now that we got the obvious out of the way... GIVE MEH MAH EVOLVED TELEVIZIONS NOW! MOAR!!111
*sigh* (Score:5, Informative)
Just use MPEG4 / H264 (Score:3, Interesting)
Why even bother with the Adobe "Tax", when you can just use MPEG4 with H264. Surely that's all Flash does anyhow? The only third-party software that I would look forward to on my set top box is VLC.
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When a trivial Firefox addon can download the flv, and a one-click application can re-encapsulate it as an avi or an mp4 (since flvs can carry h264), that argument starts to look really stupid.
DRM never works, but this is DRM that, again, is defeated by a Firefox extension. Also by a proxy, for that matter, or any number of other ways.
Broadcasters shouldn't care, anyway. They don't outlaw VCRs or DVRs, why would this bother them? VHS didn't stop people from buying cable -- if anything, it added to the value
No thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
Flash sucks bad enough on actual computers. I really can't see what it offers that a powerful computer hooked up to your TV can't. I'd also rather not spend a good chunk of change on the processing power necessary to display Flash. It already brings my Pentium 4 to its knees.
Re:No thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
That's just the point. I do not want to have to connect my TV to my computer. I want to plug my television in, i want to sit on my couch, and i only want to have to think about what buttons to press on my remote. It's called simplicity.
"It Just Works..."
- An extremely powerful and often overlooked notion
Re:No thank you (Score:5, Interesting)
"I really can't see what it offers that a powerful computer hooked up to your TV can't"
That's just the point. I do not want to have to connect my TV to my computer. I want to plug my television in, i want to sit on my couch, and i only want to have to think about what buttons to press on my remote. It's called simplicity.
I worked for a large electronics company on an IPTV system a couple of years ago. Everything came from the internet -- the schedule, the video streams, extra information about programmes.
At no point could you tell it was running Java on a tiny embedded Linux box with some fancy video & audio decoding chips.
Everything was easily navigated using the four coloured buttons on the remote, plus the arrow keys. It was as simple as normal digital television, although with more information available. (It was also built with completely open standards, except for all the electronics companies patenting everything they could think of, and then getting pissed off with the patent troll companies trying to mess up the standards to get "their" ideas in.)
I expect Flash would be similar. Back when I was working for the company (2007) there were discussions about having a TV that ran Javascript, with the electronic programme guides in HTML and SVG.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Flash - Why?
Video - TV does this very well already ?!
Animation - See above
Interactivity - Why use flash?
There are much much simpler lighter solutions than flash .... it is used on PC's now mostly for Video simply as container/player not for it's advanced interactive features ....
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>>Video - TV does this very well already ?!
I think this is a good point. However, this whole debate is fueled by the fact (IMHO) that cable companies want hordes of ca$h for their on-demand services thru a DVR.
If cable companies would start charging more reasonable prices for their on-demand content, (like$0.99 cents/movie, or even $1.99, instead of four bucks a pop) this debate would probably go away and flash would play nice on the computer.
If cable companies could think straight, they could bury co
Re:No thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
You're probably not the target audience.
The target audience is Joe Shmoe who knows just enough about his computer to not shove the USB stick into the floppy drive. If that.
Joe doesn't want to figure out a way how to plug his computer, which is somewhere in his "home office" (aka lumber-room), into the flatscreen he has in the living room that's halfway across his home. He wants a cheap box that he hooks up to the spare internet jack that the friendly guy from his internet provider tacked to his living room wall for the handful of greens he slipped into his pocket, and that puts "the internet" on his TV.
Whether that's Flash or Shlaf, Joe doesn't care. He wants it to work without tinkering with it.
I know it's hard to understand, and I barely can myself, but there's a lot of people who don't want to know how their tech toys work, they just want them to be simple and working. They also don't disassemble their TV set-top boxes when they break down to see what's insides. Hard to grasp that idea, I know. But they really are a huge market.
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- Arthur C. Clarke
I believe that a large portion of the population is at the stage where electronics and computers are "magic", even if they don't call it that.
Re:No thank you (Score:4, Interesting)
It may not change very quickly right now due to the economy, but I'm pretty sure most new TVs have PC-In and more PCs are coming with HDMI. All you need is a VGA or HDMI cable and an audio cable. It is amazing how many cool things there are to do that most people don't know about that only require one or two cables and equipment they already have. My wife and I watched a live event streamed over the internet using a wireless router, a laptop, a TV, and a receiver. It beat the hell out of watching it on just the laptop and we didn't even have to buy anything extra.
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Oh, is that all? I can watch a live event with just a tv and cable plugged into its back.
But I'm sure for the average person, configuring a wireless router so it recognizes their own network, which they also set up, dragging out a laptop, hooking it to their tv with the right cable and running it through a receiver is much more convenient.
It beat the hell out of watching it o
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Cables - most people get a bunch with any graphics card
TV - most people already have one collecting dust in the living room
Laptop - most people already have at least one in the house
They didn't have to buy anything _extra_. Just use the stuff already lying around the house and some free time.
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I can watch a live event with just a tv and cable plugged into its back.
Not this one. This one wasn't on TV.
But I'm sure for the average person, configuring a wireless router so it recognizes their own network, which they also set up, dragging out a laptop, hooking it to their tv with the right cable and running it through a receiver is much more convenient.
Average people either pay to have their router set up or borrow the naighbor's internet. I had the cables already plugged in to the TV and receiver. It was just a matter of setting the laptop next to them and plugging in cables to the only holes that would fit. It was really easy, most people just don't know that.
So the wireless router, cables and receiver were all free?
Yes. The router was a neighbor's, the cables came with stuff we bought, and the receiver was a birthday present. That isn't what I said, though. My point i
Re:No thank you (Score:4, Funny)
This is definitely NOT good advice for most people.
No thank you-Tab A:Slot B. (Score:3, Funny)
This is definitely NOT good advice for most people.
It works for the propagation of the species.
Re:No thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, is that all? I can watch a live event with just a tv and cable plugged into its back.
And how do you do that when the live event isn't being carried on that cable, because you don't pay for service or your provider simply doesn't carry the feed?
So the wireless router, cables and receiver were all free?
For someone who already has a computer, a home wireless network, and a big modern television, but who wants to watch streaming video on a bigger screen, yes. Things I already own, when used in a new application, are free for that new application. I bought and paid for the items for a different application, and "got my money's worth" for that other purpose, so anything extra is, well, a free extra.
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My wife and I watched a live event streamed over the internet using a wireless router, a laptop, a TV, and a receiver. It beat the hell out of watching it on just the laptop ...
My wife and I watched a live event with nothing more than our eyeballs and a pair of tickets. I can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure it beat the hell out of watching it on just a laptop.
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It only makes sense until you want to upgrade something. By having everything separate, I can upgrade any component without affecting the others.
Re:No thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah yes, the inviolate "it works for ME!" argument.
Good ol' rock. Nothing beats rock!
Re:No thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing you're a Windows user. Flash Player for OS X or Linux tends to be much slower. I can be running on modern processors with plenty of memory, and while it doesn't usually stutter or skip (which is usually attributable to bad internet), it does use a lot of processor, heating the machine incredibly.
Of course, if you're designing a machine specifically to run flash, I'm guessing you can optimize it for Flash and not have the same issues.
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Weird. I've got a Linux machine that's a PIII-800, with 256MB RAM, running the latest Debian.
Runs Youtube just fine. Takes a couple of seconds to get the vid loaded and intialized, but once it's playing it's fine.
You're right, though, the non-IE versions of Flash take a crapload of processor time.
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The latest crop of flash ads fairly consistently hang both Safari and FireFox on my (Intel) Mac laptop, too. It has gotten so bad that I've resorted to the clicktoflash WebKit plug-in. And flash is the #1 most common cause of browser crashes for me, too. Nearly every crash I've ever seen in Safari contains Flash plug-in symbols in the backtrace. I have seen two or three non-Flash Safari crashes in all the years I've used Safari, versus about two or three crashes per week that are directly attributable t
Re:No thank you (Score:5, Funny)
Silverlight (Score:5, Funny)
Looks like that's another nail in Silverlight's coffin.
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in the form of screwing over the entire planet with a physical lock in for another proprietary piece of crap?
no thanks.
I'd like options other than flash on my monitors, as opposed to a tv that will not function as a monitor because "flash is good enough".
Re:Silverlight (Score:5, Informative)
another proprietary piece of crap
Wake up, it's 2009 already. Adobe has published [adobe.com] the SWF specification (version 10, no less) almost a year ago.
Re:Silverlight (Score:5, Informative)
I think Rob Savoye of Gnash, the GPL Flash project would beg to differ [youtube.com] on it's relevance. I recommend viewing the whole interview as he touches on the subject of legal traps in Adobe's agreements which you need to sign if you want to get the specification.
Re:Silverlight (Score:4, Informative)
From that video: "If you've ever installed the Flash Plugin, you can't work on Gnash."
Seriously, WTF? That can't be true, can it? If you've installed Adobe Flash even once, you can never work on Gnash again? (or other Flash projects, I guess).
Sheesh, talk about restrictive licensing...
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Remember kids: Only Microsoft monopolies are bad monopolies!
/sarcasm
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I think that would be unfortunate. Even at this early stage Moonlight works better than Flash on my computer. Probably because Adobe doesn't feel like providing any support for FreeBSD. At least with Mono and Moonlight I get something.
Then again, Flash just sucks, yes, long and hard, and I doubt anything can be done to make it less sucktastic.
Um no... (Score:5, Insightful)
Watching the Low quality youtube on my 42" is a painful experience. I deleted my XBMC plugin that does youtube because of that.
Why not simply make the freaking interface in the TV 100% open and let people do what they want? Or better yet, leave the TV to be a dumb monitor and use an external box? OMG is it so bad to have a 8"X8"X2" box hidden behind it?
The only thing I need in the TV is an rs232 interface with discreet on,off, all settings and feedback. (Yes my panasonic has this and I use it)
What is it with the fetish to put everything inside the TV? My old RCA Scenium had the built in WEB system and that never worked right.
Re:Um no... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not simply make the freaking interface in the TV 100% open and let people do what they want? Or better yet, leave the TV to be a dumb monitor and use an external box?
For one thing, people already have too many external boxes plugged into the TV, to the point where they need more external boxes to switch among several inputs. Some people chose the PlayStation 2 over the GameCube and the PLAYSTATION 3 over the Wii because owners of Nintendo consoles would "need another box" to play movie discs.
Re:Um no... (Score:4, Insightful)
The answer isn't to add more things to the TV. The answer is to consolidate the boxes outside the TV.
Historically, bundling peripherals into the TV rarely captures more than a niche market. And whatever they put in there will need to be firmware or software update-capable, lest your TV outlive your Flash capabilities.
Re:Um no... (Score:5, Informative)
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Another benefit of keeping all the bells and whistles in an external box is that you don't have to get a virus scanner for your tv to keep the tv itself from being rooted by some flash vulnerability.
It'd be nice to still have some devices left that you don't have to reboot or reinstall daily or weekly.
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That's because most people do not have the right external box for their TV. Think of your standard stereo unit. Nobody plugs things directly into the speakers. They plug it into the central box, and that central box has a selector mechanism that allows you to choose which audio signal gets to the speakers.
No. Most people go spend $99 on a cheap-ass all in one POS from WalMart, and then go do the same again when one of the following happens:
1. Their 90-day warranty unit fries itself in 120 days.
2. They decide they need a new capability (CD/DVD/BlueRay/MP3/whatever) and they find their cheap POS doesn't have a jack on the back for extra inputs, because that would have cost an extra 18 cents to manufacture.
Re:Um no... (Score:4, Interesting)
Think of your standard stereo unit. Nobody plugs things directly into the speakers. They plug it into the central box, and that central box has a selector mechanism that allows you to choose which audio signal gets to the speakers.
No offense, but the "standard stereo unit" is about 3 inches long, two inches wide, a quarter inch thick, and boots with a fruit-shaped logo on the screen. Many, many people, myself included, find a "home electronics system" as you describe to be very much a product of the 1990s - and very much out of date.
I'm much happier to have as few boxes as possible, and just plug them directly into the TV.
Is the stereo dead? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, if the radio could play any song you wanted it to at any moment.
Come visit Berklee School of Music some time, and hang around the recording studios. 500 top-performing students in a highly-competitive music production program, at a school that's generated a hell of a lot of the music you probably listen to. Eight full-size recording studios, plus countless smaller synth labs.
Your Indigo sound
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Most TVs I've seen do this.
They have three (usually more) audio+video inputs, of various kinds. There's one audio output, which goes to an external amplifier if you want, probably to the "TV" input.
Changing the video source using the remote changes which audio source is piped to the TV's output. The selector on the external audio amplifier only needs adjusting if you have a CD player (etc) connected.
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Integrated into the TV means that it would be potentially (if they do it right) easy to control. Think frontrow but for hulu.
Blame the summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the companies to sign up to the Flash platform are, as far as I can tell, chip-fabs and set-top manufacturers, NOT TV-makers. Sony and Samsung, for example, have not signed up.
The fact that the summary and the linked article don't make this clear is very annoying. We're seeing a steady shift in /. articles away from facts and direct-source links (hence my FP), and towards rhetoric and spin. I'd harp on about how much this pisses me off and skews the whole discussion, but I've already strayed off-topic.
I agree with your position, but it's basically moot. This will primarily emerge in set-top boxes - at least until it's had chance to become mainstream.
Re:Um no... (Score:4, Insightful)
[quote]What is it with the fetish to put everything inside the TV? [/quote]
-For the consumer: The illusion that it will be easy to use for technophobes (50+).
-For the corps: The illusion that people will tolerate commercials on it like a TV.
Re:Um no... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not everything in flash is low/poor quality. Just because YouTube's quality is crap, doesn't mean it has to be.
The high quality version of iPlayer looks surprisingly good on my 42".
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Blame Youtube for overcompressing.
Because of Youtube, many think 'flash video = crappy quality', but Flash does support HD video with H.264 and even the codec in Flash7 was licensed from Sorenson; the same codec was being used in those nice Quicktime movie trailers.
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YouTube uses video formats (Score:4, Informative)
We have these cool things called video formats that I prefer my, um, video to be in.
YouTube uses video formats: FLV by Sorenson for viewers on Flash 7 set-top boxes, and H.264 for viewers on PCs and phones that can do H.264. But video formats like H.264 aren't optimal for cel or sprite animations like those seen on Newgrounds; a vector animation format like SWF can handle those more efficiently.
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Of course the tech is going to get better as time goes on.
The tech is already here, but YouTube chooses not to use it. Why should I expect that to change? It's not like YouTube is so cutting edge, ahead-of-the-times, their resolution options are restricted by technology (because it isn't).
*Argh!* (Score:3, Interesting)
We need open media standards! I wish flash would just die. I'm a web designer and when asked to produce flash content, I say "N O". And explain to my client why.
Just imagine how the Internet would be if Adobe controlled your image file format too.
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Not hard. It'd be PDF.
I pretty much avoid the Adobe stuff for a reason. Bloated crapware that has more bugs and less compatibility than most of it's competitors, but has a few user-abusing features that the marketeers love, and so it gets promoted.
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Linux? (Score:2, Funny)
Only 1 problem with that (Score:5, Insightful)
Content providers don't want Hulu on your TV. The Boxee debacle proves that. Right now, they can't monetize the eyeballs delivered via Hulu as well as they can as the ones delivered via broadcast and cable. Until they figure out a way to do that, they're going to make it as painful as they can for you to get "TV" over the Internet. Look at how the amount of content on Hulu has actually shrunk lately (fewer full runs or full seasons of shows available, more "preview" and last three broadcast episodes shows).
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As somone who doesn't live in the states, I can tell you now, we don't want goddamn Hulu either.
I wish there was a greasemonkey script to completely and utterly remove the word from the internet for me, it completely goes against the principles of the internet as far as I'm concerned
IP region locking is a deplorable act, please don't mention Hulu again. - seriously, let them die.
Oh, good (Score:5, Funny)
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The ability to Rick Roll your own family would be a feature. Especially if your kids friends are being too loud watching the TV with your child and suddenly you Rick Roll the whole group to hint at the idea that they should turn it down if they want to keep watching.
Different revenue (Score:3, Insightful)
This doesn't really make getting rid of cable an option for many people. It might open up some options. But for many, the best option for a decent internet connection is still the cable provider. This won't get rid of them. It may change the revenue stream a bit, though. Raise your hand if you think they won't whine and complain about any and all changes to a business model.
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I watch 5 channels of those 70. A la cart please?
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I think they were referring to the TV part of your cable service not the internet part. I pay $40 a month just to have 70 standard channels with no cable box.
And I think grandparent was referring to some local cable companies' practice of including basic TV service at next to no additional charge so that high-speed Internet customers are less likely to switch to DirecTV.
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Hear's my strongly worded opinion! (Score:4, Funny)
I think that Flash [buffering...]
Re:Hear's my strongly worded opinion! (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Awesome! (Score:2, Insightful)
MHP (Score:4, Funny)
Another proposal:
Base it on Java instead, call it MHP and let it painfully die..... again.
OTOH, the time may be right for a standard for "interactive" TV
JAVA (Score:5, Insightful)
seems to me that Flash is becoming everything Java wanted to be back in the 90s
This will probably get heavily flamed... (Score:3, Insightful)
...but this is why were seeing TimeWarner lead the charge towards total GB/month bandwidth limits. Between Netflix, XBox Live movie downloads, iTunes, Hulu, etc etc, they're seeing their business model being slowly put to the wayside for more and more content delivered over the internet.
Not necessarily saying it's a bad thing, it's great. It's long past time for the government sanctioned monopolies that are your local cable company to come to an end, but they're certainly not going to go w/out a fight. Hard download caps are the first volley in a war that's probably going to get rather unpleasant before its over.
Just what I always wanted.. (Score:4, Funny)
..a tv with a glaring large "Press ESC to exit full screen mode". Okay, I'm willing to swing this if we make a promise to use less flash content on the web.
Unless of course.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Tv from Idiocracy? (Score:2)
I can see it now.... (Score:2)
After a year or so, they'll "upgrade" whatever version of Flash is used and expect you to go out and buy yet another new television.
The up side (Score:2)
With the ability to run Hulu, YouTube and others, the question of dropping your cable becomes a little bit more reasonable
. Also with access to all those porn sites, the question of pulling your cable becomes a little bit more reasonable
This is the worst thing I've ever heard of. (Score:2)
This is worse than the plague or sudden infant death.
Who are adobe kidding? Seriously, I just heard one of my co-workers shoot himself when I sent him the link here.
I DETEST flash video, the vast, vast majority of sites get it 'wrong' few of them work well, the buffering system is horrible and it's an added expense to my television to boot.
The quality sucks, I hate having to start a movie, then hit pause to get it to stream some ahead.
Bandwidth just isn't there for this, sure it works sometimes but I would
Linux on TV (Score:2, Insightful)
A lot of HDTVs run Linux now a days. I bet you that this will extend the current OS in the TV to take advantage of Flash. Now the real question is are we finally going to get a Linux Flash version that doesn't suck? :-P
Flash is evil... (Score:2)
Why would I want to permanently embed an insecure product in my tv?
Enough Horrible Content Already (Score:2)
Flash Player != Flash flv format (Score:3, Interesting)
Flash can play multiple formats, so just because you don't like flv doesn't mean you can't use something else, like h264.
It should make TV owners nervous, too (Score:2)
> In a move that should make cable companies nervous, Adobe announces
> they are going to push a Flash that runs directly on TVs.
Considering the security patches Adobe has had to release for Flash, as a TV owner, I too would be nervous about Flash on TV. So instead of paying a cableco umpteen dollars for programs, I'd have to pay Norton or Macafee umpteen dollars for a continuously-updated anti-virus to protect my TV against the Russian Business Network. No, thank you. If I can find a Flash video wo
Re: (Score:2)
Do you really honestly think an embedded version of flash would actually require the same features that make the desktop version insecure?
Answer - no of course not.
Can't Wait (Score:4, Funny)
Great idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, this sounds like Good News for the industry. An API for set top boxes that is more open than OpenTV, and has a sensible desktop client which can preview what it will look like on deployed machines?
Flash can scale for 4:3 and 16:9 machines instead of having a single bitmap font (cf: opentv, mheg, liberate). It antialiases fonts properly (cf: liberate, or 'at all' wrt opentv/mheg). It renders predictably (cf: ce-html). It allows you to use your own display fonts (cf: liberate, mheg), and predict how much content will display per page programatically (scrolling bad, paging good).
It allows for compression of content using zlib, for vector, resolution-independent graphics (smaller than the equivalent, SD-res jpeg).
I'm just hoping it gets deployed widely and that they find a sensible way to have a hardware player.
jeez everybody relax (Score:3, Insightful)
this is just an opening salvo
the comments here act as if this is the last television upgrade ever
give it time people, calm the fuck down. everyone understands your complaints before you even speak them as your complaints really aren't that insightful but rather obvious
technology evolves, so wait and see and chill out
xbox360 (Score:3, Informative)
I was very surprised at how easy it was and how well this worked, but over the weekend I finally paired-up my xbox360 and vista 64-bit with tv pack 2008 media center. Then I fired-up the media center on the xbox 360 and it was virtually indistinguishable from running media center from the computer on the TV. My son was able to play RCT3 on the computer while my wife watched recorded TV on the computer from the xbox 360, all using a remote control that looks like a TV/DVD combo remote. It was better than AppleTV, I was surprised that I had not heard more about just how good this combo of vista + media center + xbox360 is.
The xbox360 also lets me watch streamed NetFlix movies. My Samsung TV also allows me to get lots of content over the internet. I see Philips TVs that do similar things. I think Adobe sees this and is afraid that in the future they will be less relevant as people spend their idle time on the couch once more.
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Given my experiences with Flash.
I think I'd prefer it.