Adobe Scores with MLB, Silverlight Strikes Out

Yesterday in a stunning defeat, the Adobe® Flash® Platform beat out Microsoft's Silverlight as the video delivery platform for MLB.com. Major League Baseball Advanced Media, MLBAM, is dropping Silverlight after one year in favor of Flash which MLBA's president and CEO Bob Bowman said better suits its needs. Under a two-year agreement the Adonbe's Flash Platform will deliver all of MLB.com's live and on-demand video offerings beginning in 2009. MLB.com has signed up more than 1.5 million subscribers since 2003 and streams more than 2,500 regular and postseason games annually.

Bowman said "our experience with Silverlight has led us to where we are.. We did it because we serve up more live video than anybody "Flash provides a TV-like experience, you turn it on and it works... We want it to be flexible so we can add features...and it’s got to be scaleable. We are the largest server of live entertainment int he country. Whether we are serving 20,000 for one game or 250,000 for another game it’s got to be scaleable over periods of time like nothing else.”

Read the full press release here.

Baseball is not the only sport that has drafted Flash as a delivery platform as it was just in September that the NFL selected Flash for streaming of football games on NBCSports and NFL.com. Many tech blogs implied that NBC "dropped", "dumped" or "ditched" Silverlight in favor of Flash and it was Dan Rayburn who set the record straight saying, NBC Did Not "Drop" Silverlight In Favor Of Flash: Bloggers Simply Want Headlines | The Business Of Online Video.

Ben Homer of Online Video Watch noted,"While the battle rages on, Flash has 98% penetration versus Silverlight’s 25% Microsoft continues to have a rough time convincing media companies to get on board with Silverlight without paying them to do so. Instead of releasing a new product in Silverlight that does more than Flash Microsoft is still trying to play catchup, and they’re falling further and further behind."

The Flash/MLB.com partnership was announced this week in San Francisco at the Adobe Max developers conference which kicked off with other major announcements in the latest Flash technology developments.

Among them were:

• Adobe Flash Platform streamlines creation of applications, content, and video for the web
• Adobe unveils Flash Media Server 3.5 for delivering rich interactive media over the web
• ARM and Adobe join forces to accelerate Flash and AIR for ARM platforms
• Adobe expands collaboration with SAP to maximize business agility for customers

There was also a lot of buzz about Adobe opening up its cloud initiative, known as “Cocomo,” as a public beta which allows developers easily add real-time social capabilities into their RIA. Read more about Cocomo here.

Related:

• In Major Blow to Silverlight MLBAM Moves to Flash | Online Video Watch
• Beet.TV: Breaking: Major League Baseball Signs Adobe for Streaming, Microsoft's Silverlight has Setback
• MLB.com drops Silverlight for Adobe Flash | Digital Media - CNET News
• MLB to Silverlight: You’re Out! « NewTeeVee
• Streamingmedia.com: Everything Changes In (A) Flash
• Adobe's CEO Underestimating Microsoft's Ability To Compete With Flash | The Business Of Online Video
• Flash Is Now A Platform, AIR Gets An Upgrade, And Adobe Puts A Catalyst In Gumbo

Beet.TV: More on H.264 with Adobe's Kevin Towes

Andy Plesser posted this follow up interview with Kevin Towes from Adobe who goes into more detail about H.264 and the difference between high quality and high definition video. Towes describes container formats like .flv, .rm and .wmv as "end of the line" formats because that's all you can use them for since they are encoded to their proprietary formats. H.264 is more of a universal format that can delivered in both Quicktime and Flash formats which offers a greater ROI on your transcoding.

How do you deliver a HD experience through broadband? 1080p demands 15 Mbps and the web can't sustain that level of streaming. Towes says that we need to develop a "Web HD Concept" that can emulate a HD viewing experience but not deliver a true HD signal. You could have widescreen video, a certain frame size with a variable bit rate to achieve high quality with H.264.




The fact is that H.264 video looks great, it's scalable, standards based and can easily be delivered in a variety of formats. It's been several years in the making to reach its current state of adoption and could be widespread throughout the online video ecosystem by the end of the year. From digital device, to digital television and Blu-Ray disc you'll start seeing it more and more.

Kevin Towes' interview continues as he describes that file size is based on frame size, frame rate and but rate and how it can be estimated.




- Videos courtesy of Beet.TV

Adobe Media Player is Here - RSS feeds and Offline Viewing Now Available

Adobe Media Player is finally here and it sets a new standard for the delivery of video content in a rich media experience for both online and offline viewing. I just read posts by Dan Rayburn, Andy Plesser and Duncan Reily who have all reported that it's official and now available for public download. So without hesitation I raced over to Adobe and downloaded it myself to get the party started. I've already set up a few subscriptions including Beet.TV, The GigaOm Show and The Digg Reel just to name a few but there's plenty more to choose from including the Twilight Zone channel or Yo' MTV Raps.

Silicon Alley Insider reported a few days ago that Adobe Media Player (AMP) would be released to the public this week and it would offer many new features. In the report Michael Learmonth explained that Adobe Media Player is different from other players by offering playback of high quality MPEG-4 content and unlike other players like Joost or Blinkx, also Adobe will not have to deal with big bandwidth costs since the content is downloaded and played back locally but will see only a small cut in advertising revenue since most of that will go to content owners, and the new player will most likely be widely adopted with since people are accustomed to Flash Player downloads and will see AMP as an upgrade option.

A pre-release version of AMP had already available at Adobe Labs and had been used to test user experience and for content owners to test the RSS feeds. The new player is based on Adode Air which enables content to be viewed on-line and off-line. With AMP you'll be able to add your own RSS feeds to get automatic content downloads. You'll also be able to play .flv files outside of the browser, something you haven't been able to do before with out the aid of another player.

Andy Plesser notes, "Unlike iTunes, which provides little opportunities for video producers to monetize through advertising, the AMP platform is highly customizable. AMP supports banner advertising and all sorts of in-stream media. (Implementation is not that simple and requires some coding skills.)"

In his post, "Hold the Presses: Adobe Enters the Media Business: Advertising Sales as Software Services", Plesser describes how AMP's advertising model works and that he's proud to have Beet.TV be part of the launch. He included an interview with Adobe's Laurel Reitman who discusses the rich media experience , file formats and servers.



Dan Rayburn explains, "One of the biggest things that Adobe is promoting about the new player is the ability for you to be able search within the player for free content you can to subscribe to and the new features for monetization and branding options. Content owners now have the ability to take downloadable Flash content and include offline advertising, customize the look of the player and collect measurement data of offline content consumption."

Two video interviews with Ashley Still, Adobe Sr. Product manager that are featured below. One is from Webware.com by Rafe Needleman who says, "I see AMP as a competitor to Hulu (related stories), although Adobe's Ashley Manning Still, who demonstrated the product for me, considers Hulu--an online-only Flash-based player--as complementary or perhaps a partner. But since both AMP and Hulu are competing for the same advertising revenues, I'd say that puts them at odds."

Ashley Still contended that Hulu is big partner with Adobe while Joost is a competitor and that Adobe is an enabling technology provider and will be adding more content partners in the future.



Robert Scoble also interviewed Ashley Still in this Qik video who says for content owners it's a compelling way to redistribute content and Adobe is looking at this as a big distribution platform. It will have free subscriptions to shows and along with different pricing structures to purchase content. There is a SDK that will be available but no APIs as of yet but you'll be able to brand your player. Different resolutions will be supported from SD to HD video all the way up to 1080p. It will work on Mac and Windows and Linux soon.



Adobe also debuts Adobe TV which Duncan Reily notes, "Adobe TV is available at tv.adobe.com or as a network in Adobe Media Player and offers “expert instruction and original series programming” about Adobe products. Adobe TV offers four channels targeted at Photographers, Designers, Video Professionals, and Developers. Content comes from “Adobe evangelists, leading trainers, subject matter experts, and luminaries.” Over 200 videos are available for the launch."

Related:

• Yet Another Video Service, Adobe Edition - from Silicon Alley Insider by Michael Learmonth - April 7, 2008
  
• Get ready for Adobe Media Player (updated with video demo) - from Webware.com by Rafe Needleman – April 4, 2008
• Adobe's new video player Pre-Announcement - by Scobleizer on April 07, 2008
  
• Adobe Wants to Be a Player - from Businessweek by Cliff Edwards - April 3, 2008
• NAB 2007: Major Announcements from Microsoft and Adobe Shake Up the World of Online Video - from Streamingmedia.com by Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen - April 16, 2007

It's All About Integration (Seesmic + Twhirl) and (Qik, Flixwagon + YouTube)

Convergence, acquisitions and integration are the synergy that feeds our social networks, entertainment outlets and information feeds. It was big news for Seesmic yesterday as Loic Le Meur announced the acquisition Twhirl, a popular Adode Air Twitter client by German developer Marco Kaiser that lets users connect with text messaging social services like Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku outside of a browser interface.

Loic Le Meur says, "Staying in touch with your friends using microblogging is much easier using a client than through your browser" and offers 20 reasons why this integration will benefit the Seesmic community on his blog and in the video below.




There has been plenty of coverage on the acquisition TechMeme and on Le Meur's blog. and ReadwriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick sums up the benefits an in depth review, Seesmic + Twhirl is a Vision of the Web's Future, saying that, "Video + Microblogging = Rich User Experience" and that, "How long until even more services are rolled into this new dynamo? Seesmic already integrates outbound publishing with YouTube, Qik and Twitter. How long until the company rolls out lifestreaming capabilities ala FriendFeed, displaying recent user and aggregate-friend activity on any number of other services - then storming the Facebook Newsfeed as a packaged solution to the 3rd party RSS feed dilemma there? Probably not very long... Lifestreaming apps are making this a service, FriendFeed is the leader today, but somehow this functionality is a logical thing to come to Seesmic/Twhirl next."

Doug Caverly from WebProNews says, "There are obviously some potential sticking points - Seesmic is still in alpha, and Twitter itself is notorious for suffering untimely outages. Yet on the whole, the deal looks like it could give quite a boost to microblogging."

Rich media user experiences combined with real-time social interaction drives integration. Whether it's an acquisition or partnership the result is a new and improved tool set for us to communicate.

Live streaming from mobile phones is another red hot area of integration with Qik and Flixwagon announcing their ability to directly upload videos to YouTube a few weeks back.

Robert Scoble reported the Qik news on March 15th and generated some good discussion on quality settings for Qik videos. On the Qik blog Bhaskar Roy said, "Keeping with the mantra of being able to stream video from your cell phone to the world - with this integration, Qikkers can now stream to YouTube, Mogulus, Seesmic, Mobuzz, and all your blogs and websites - automatically just by pressing "Stream" on your cell phone!"

According to a Flixwagon press release, they announced their users will have a new tool,"the FliXee Widget which will stream live mobile-to-web broadcasts directly to Flixwagon users Websites, Blogs, and Social Networking sites. Additionally, Flixwagon users will now have the capability to deliver their mobile-to-web broadcasts directly to YouTube through their Flixwagon account."

Flixwagon media darling and Pop17 producer Sarah Meyers talked with Andy Plesser in this Beet.TV interview about the evolution of live streaming and the new Qik and Flixwagon mobile streaming APIs for YouTube.



It's all about integration.

Adobe Air Lifts Off

Amidst the constant battles between competing formats we as end users ultimately benefit from the development of new tools and applications. A convergence between the web experience and the desktop environment is taking shape in the form of Adobe Air, the new cross-platform runtime that gives web developers the tools to build rich web applications for the desktop.

Andy Plesser of Beet.tv writes in his post, Attention Video Publishers: New Adobe Desktop Environment for Web Shows Could be Cooler than QuickTime Podcasts, "There's been a good bit of anticipation about the Adobe Media Player (AMP), the application that will allow users to download videos to a desktop environment. Up until now, virtually all Flash video files are streamed and watched in a browser... Unlike podcasts, which are downloaded and saved as files along with some enclosed metadata, the new AMP environment will appear as a sort of rich, Web-like environment. It is on the desktop, but connected to the Web and updated via RSS."

Plesser interviewed Ryan Stewart "Rich Application Internet Mountaineer" and ZDNet blogger who works for Adobe as "the Rich Internet Application Evangelist" and provides "an overview of AIR and its implications for video."




Associated quotes and video originally published on February 29th 2008 as "Attention Video Publishers: New Adobe Desktop Environment for Web Shows Could be Cooler than QuickTime Podcasts" by Andy Plesser for Beet.tv.

Related:

Live video from Adobe Engage event - February 25, 2008 - Scobelizer

AIR Goes Live: The Best Things About Adobe's AIR Platform - February 25, 2008 - ReadWriteWeb

6 Adobe AIR Apps to Check Out - February 25, 2008 - ReadWriteWeb

Adobe AIR Vs Microsoft Silverlight: It’s All About Numbers - February 26, 2008 TechCrunch

Adobe Floating on Air - March 3, 2008 - eWeek