By Tim Conneally, Betanews
Adobe's already dominated the Internet with Flash, and now, the company has begun its move to the next connected platform: the home theater. This morning, Adobe introduced Flash for the Digital Home which is designed for use on connected HDTVs, set-top Boxes, Blu-ray players, and other such devices.
Familiar Flash-based videos, apps, and widgets will be available on home theater devices as soon as the second half of this year, Adobe says. Since the company has a strong backing from OEMs, chipmakers, cable companies, and content creators in its Open Screen Project, the delivery of Flash-based content is going to become much more uniform.
A simple litmus test of Flash's penetration into the realm of television is YouTube. While the video site has the dominant market share in online video consumption, its jump onto the telly has only been provided by niche services such as TiVo and Apple TV, and hacky products like DivX Connected. With an industry-wide Flash solution, services like YouTube will become practically a standard feature in connected TVs and DVD/Blu-Ray players.
Furthermore, Adobe's press release this morning contained a statement from Vice President of Business Development at Netflix, Bill Holmes, who said, "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."
This statement lends more credence to the speculation that the Roku Netflix player will soon include YouTube support.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009