Adobe Flash bringing more widgets to TVs

By Marguerite Reardon on 20 April 2009, 10:40am

From the PC to the TV, Adobe wants to bring rich Web animation and video into your living room.

The company will on Monday announce its latest version of its Flash multimedia platform, which will essentially put its technology in Internet-connected TVs, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players and other digital home devices. The main purpose of the TV and consumer electronics optimised Flash is to allow viewers to see high-definition video, interactive applications and new user interfaces right on their TVs.

As part of the announcement, the company revealed a number of partners that plan to use the technology, including Intel, Comcast, Disney Interactive, Netflix, Atlantic Records and the New York Times Company.

Until now, Adobe's Flash Player has mainly been used on computers to make animation and video from Web sites such as YouTube available in a Web browser. The company has been very successful in this market -- roughly 80 per cent of online videos worldwide are viewed using Adobe Flash technology, according to comScrore.

The company has also adapted its technology to create a mobile version of Flash that is used on smart phones to let people watch video on the go. Now Adobe is turning its attention to the living room and big-screen HD TVs. This means that people could have full access to the entire YouTube library of video on their TVs, instead of a subset that has been specially encoded for TV viewing.

"There are some products and services that offer a subset of online video for TVs," said Anup Murarka, director of technology strategy and partner development for Adobe's Flash Platform Business Unit. "But they don't provide all the content. For example, a lot of devices play back YouTube content. But they can't offer all the videos on YouTube."

Developers will also be able to create 'widgets' for TVs to help bring Web content on to the TV screen. Widgets are specially designed Web applications that can easily be added to consumer electronics devices.

Yahoo is also offering widget technology for TVs, which it co-developed with Intel. The Yahoo Widget Channel provides access to Flickr, Yahoo News, Yahoo Weather and Yahoo Finance, USA Today, YouTube, eBay and Showtime Networks, among others. Samsung has included Yahoo Widgets on some of its new TVs.

Murarka said that Yahoo is not really competing with Adobe. He pointed out that both Adobe and Yahoo are working with Intel, and he said the Flash technology was actually complimentary to what Yahoo is doing with its Widget Channel.

"Yahoo supports Flash on desktops and our hope is that they will support Flash in TVs as well," he said. "We see Flash valuable in a number of new frameworks."

Murarka wouldn't say which consumer electronics makers plan to use the new version of Flash, but the technology is available to device makers and application developers now. Flash-enabled TVs and set-tops should be out later this year.