Flash technology is a free software provided by Adobe which is famous for its software specialized in photo and video editing. Countless websites are using this technology to let their users watch videos online.
Flash is now moving on to the TV screen. This is to be made public in the forthcoming National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, according to a report in the New York Times.
Shantanu Narayen, the CEO of Adobe, said that TV sets and top boxes that support Flash would be available on the US market later this year (2009). With the introduction of Flash, users would be able to view the same videos on their TV screens, computers and phones.
Bud Albers, the CTO of Disney, showed his company’s support to Flash on the TV by saying “Coming generations of consumers clearly expect to get their content wherever they want on it, on any device, when they want it. This gets us where we want to go.”
Adobe generates huge profits by selling softwares for Flash. It is estimated that 98% of all computers are installed with Flash and 80% of the videos online are viewed with Flash. Thanks to these impressive figures, Adobe reported a revenue of $3.5 billion, with net income being $871.8 million.
In view of the huge success of Flash, Microsoft introduced a new technology called Silverlight as an alternative for Flash. One of the selling points of Silverlight is that it supports HD 1080p video contents better.
Brad Becker from Microsoft, who is also a former Adobe executive emphasized the importance of HD capability. Every standard video to be played on TV would call for that in its form format. “I can’t imagine what could be more important on a television than high video quality.”
Adobe Flash, having almost no direct competitor for years, finally faces some challenges as Microsoft joins the competition of bridging the gap between computers and televisions with the introduction of Silverlight.
Tags: adobe, application, Business, C#, computer, Flash, game, Image rotators, Microsoft, Samples, Silverlight, software, technology, Web 2.0
