Adobe’s Flash technology, omnipresent in virtually every computer and rapidly moving throughout mobile devices, is now rolling into digital home devices, including televisions and set-top boxes.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company announced Monday that Flash will be extended to Internet-connected televisions, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players, and other home devices. Various “major system on chips” vendors, OEMs and content providers have signed on to support the optimized Flash technology, including Atlantic Records, Broadcom, Comcast, Disney Interactive Media Group, Intel, Netflix, STMicroelectronics, The New York Times, and NXP Semiconductors.

‘Will Dramatically Change’ TV

Adobe said “Flash technology-based applications will allow users to quickly switch between television programming and Web content outside the Web browser.” It also said that cable operators and device manufacturers will be able to “develop new services and powerful user interfaces that deliver immersive experiences.” The first wave on new TV sets is expected to roll out early next year.

David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of Adobe’s Platform Business Unit, told news media that the Flash platform, which includes the delivery of high-definition Web videos as well as interactive experiences, “will dramatically change the way we view content on televisions.”

The company said the expanded rollout builds on the Open Screen Project, an initiative announced last May that uses Flash as a runtime environment across televisions, desktop computers, mobile devices, and other consumer devices.

It also builds on Flash’s ubiquity. Adobe said the Flash player resides on more than 98 percent of computers with Net access, the runtime has delivered content on nearly 40 percent of all mobile devices, and the technology is the most used on the Web for video.

‘Next Step’ for Flash

The platform consists of integrated tools, frameworks, clients and servers for development and delivery, providing a consistent runtime across devices. At the same time it announced the extension of Flash to home devices, Adobe said it is releasing a new software framework for building media players, called Strobe.

It said Strobe will “help establish an open industry standard for media players and offer production-ready software components,” thus requiring less time for content providers to create their own players. Developers will be able to quickly add such functions as advertising, user measurement and tracking, and social-network integration.

Demonstrations of Flash in digital home devices are being shown at the Adobe booth at the National Association of Broadcasters trade show in Las Vegas.

Josh Martin, an analyst with Yankee Group, said this move into other devices “is the next step for Adobe Flash” because the PC market is saturated. He added that the use of Flash on handsets could provide “an interesting proof of concept” for set-top and TV makers about how to use the technology.

But, Martin added, there’s still a lot to be figured out and implemented in integrating Flash as part of an experience with which users are already familiar, such as TV. It will take a while, he said, because the cable companies and the major TV providers “are very large ships and it takes a lot to make them turn.”-News Factor Network

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