Coming to a TV Near You…

Adobe announced huge news yesterday that they are in the advanced stages of bringing the Flash Platform for the Digital Home directly to your TV screen in the next 12 months. The deal will allow Adobe to embed its Flash software onto computer chips that go inside televisions, Blu-ray players and other set-top boxes such as cable-TV units.  Adobe has already partnered with major players such as Disney, Netflix and the New York Times to collaborate on the first batch of applications.

High Definition Flash Video

As well as the prospect of delivering rich Flash applications straight to your living room TV, the announcement also revealed that the Flash Platform is being optimized to deliver HD video content. This is the next logical step for Adobe to make strategically, so that it can be at the forefront of HD digital distribution, and be leading the way when it comes to delivering it to all homes via the TV.

Flash is all about the highest quality video possible with the smallest file size, and allowing the quickest way to pipe it from a server to whatever device you’re watching video on. So it’s no surprise that Netflix have partnered with Adobe because this will now allow Netflix to deliver their entire library in high definition for the first time ever, over the air.

“As the world’s leading online movie rental service, Netflix always seeks new ways for subscribers to find and enjoy the movies they’ll love. Adobe’s Flash Platform for the Digital Home offers great promise as Netflix continues its expansion directly to the television with our consumer electronics partners.”

Bill Holmes, Netflix Vice President of Business Development

This is the final piece of the puzzle for Adobe. They already have 80%+ of the online video market with Flash Player, they will surpass 1 billion installations of Flash Lite on mobile devices this year, and now we have news that Flash is not just going to become part of the television entertainment industry, but it’s almost here.

The Flash Platform for the Digital Home is already available to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and in the next three years, projections are indicating that more than 420 million TVs, set-top boxes and media players with Adobe’s new technology are expected to roll out to customers all around the world. Much quicker than that however, Adobe expects the very first devices with support for the HD-optimized version of Flash to become available as soon as Fall 2009.

Applications on TV

Imagine being able to deliver your very own Flash applications into the homes of millions of viewers! Well, we’re now a step closer to this reality. Adobe’s Flash Platform will allow developers and content providers to create applications to deliver web-based content such as news, weather and share prices to TV screens. This is already possible to some extent on certain Sony and Samsung TV models, but instead of Flash, they are using Yahoo media platform widgets.

While the first applications using Flash are expected to hit TV sets early in 2010, here is a first look at a real example Adobe have prototyped showing a demo of the new platform. In this video we get to see someone showing the possible interactions that users might have with their favorite television programs, developed entirely in Flash:

Final Thoughts

One thing Adobe Flash has not penetrated yet is the Apple iPhone. The twist with today’s news is that where Adobe might once have wanted to desperately get their platform onto the iPhone, the tables now seemed turned. The dominance of Adobe Flash in light of today’s announcement means that Apple probably need Adobe more than Adobe needs Apple.

All I can think about at this stage is how much of a threat (or an opportunity…) this is to Apple.  Apple have tried to lead the way with HD video distribution through iTunes and Apple TV, yet they keep hitting a brick wall when it comes to market penetration.  Time and time again people speak of “when will Flash be enabled on the iPhone?”  One thing is for sure, the day Flash Player is enabled on the iPhone, it will be the death of the QuickTime Player as we know it today. But here’s a thought. What if Apple bought-out Adobe?  Or what if Apple and and Adobe partnered to create the perfect blend of sophisticated hardware and powerful software? 

“We continue to work with Apple to bring Flash to the iPhone.”

David Wadhwani, Vice President of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe

It could happen.

But for now, Adobe are simply doing everything they can to make Flash an every day part of digital distribution across all media. And boy are they doing it well.