Adobe Flash Is The New Standard For HD Internet Video
Dec 5th, 2007 | By James Lewin | Category: Internet TV, Streaming Video, Video 
Adobe Systems today announced the immediate availability of Adobe Flash Player 9, which adds H.264 standard video support, the same standard deployed in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD high definition video players, and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio capabilities.
The update also features hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced, full-screen video playback for high-resolution viewing across major operating systems and browsers.
Because of Flash’s ubiquitous reach, Flash 9 is likely to become a de facto standard for delivering HD Web video. Internet startup Hulu already has a Flash-based HD Web video offering in beta testing. We’ve tested it out, and found the image quality to be excellent, and the streaming rate to be smooth, but not flawless.
You can download the Flash update from the Adobe site.
H.264 Support
H.264 support is an encoding option in Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects software and is integrated across the Adobe Flash family of products. Support extends to applications developed for Adobe AIR software, a cross-operating system application runtime that lets developers build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop.
Expected to be available in early 2008, Adobe Media Player will leverage both H.264 video and HE-AAC audio support and take Flash streaming video outside the Web browser to an independent player.
HD Everywhere
Adobe Flash Player content reaches over 99 percent of Internet-enabled desktops, as well as hundreds of millions of mobile and set-top devices. Flash-based players power online video solutions for CBS, NBC, FoxNews Digital, PBS, MTV Networks, BBC, Hulu, YouTube and MySpace. With H.264 and HE-AAC support in Adobe Flash Player 9, Flash could become a de facto standard for delivering HDTV-quality streaming video on the Web.
Since H.264 and HE-AAC are open industry standards and already integrated into existing authoring and publishing workflows, content producers can leverage their existing H.264 content.
Update: More from Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee.
[…] Original post by Podcasting News […]
How do you figure this is the “New HD Standard”! Seems a bit of a misnomer. The H.264 encoding is a standard, but not the proprietary Flash container or servers. Neither is it yet an HD standard from the standpoint of popularity. It sounds like a headline from the Adobe PR team.
I agree with Frank. The only news here is that Flash now supports h.264. Apple and QuickTime have been pushing h.264 for well over a year now. The big names (ABC, NBC, etc.) are excited about it because they can lock their content inside the Flash player easier.
Frank/Rob
Flash is going to be a de facto standard for viewing HD web videos – not because it can deliver h.264, but because it has 99% penetration and because it lets the big names (ABC, NBC, etc.) “lock their content inside the Flash player.”
Still an inaccurate “screamer” headline….the difference between bloggers and real journalists. Hopefully you can stay closer to the spirit of the latter.
“Is” is not the same as “Is going to be,” even if that were to happen.
[…] There is another platform out there with huge potential that’s been quietly sneaking up.¬† Adobe is building a family around Flash technology and all of it’s derivatives that is extremely potent.¬† They’re taking the HD video delivery world by storm, so much so that it looks like Flash will be the standard for HD delivery.¬† I also noticed an interesting article in RIApedia on the Acrobat Connect product, which looks a lot like WebEx.¬† Characteristically, Microsoft will have to show up before too long (they probably have already and I missed it) to announce they want to play in this pond too, so Cisco is not going to have it to themselves. […]
[…] […]