Adobe has upped the ante in the competition between Silverlight and Flash - it will catch up in quality of video streaming by offering a beta version of Flash player that supports H.264 codec - the same one used in iPod and iTunes video today (or tomorrow, depending which timezone you are). The news are available here and here. Tinic Uro, a Flash engineer from Adobe, has provided more insights on what various codecs and standards the new Flash player will support.
Finally, we have a user-friendly way to watch near DVD (I would not be greedy and ask for Hi-Definition) quality online streaming videos. Actually, this comes at the right time when I previously made a point on how unsatisfactory Flash video currently is when showing action-packed clips.
Also, it will be interesting that Youtube, which already has converted user-uploaded videos to H.264 format for Apple TV, can probably make them available online to all Internet users through this updated Flash player version later the year.
The adoption of standard H.264 codec will be a good thing from both user and content/video producers points of views, in terms of ease of video access and video production delivery.
One concern I have is that, with higher video quality/resolution support coming soon, it will be unavoidable to see subtitle-style in-show advertisement, similar to what most TV shows have these days, which is not really feasible with the current supported lower resolution of Flash video. Embrace more ads!
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