Adobe Flashing Past Microsoft In The Home

Adobe introduced a new version of its Flash Web video playing technology for televisions and other home entertainment devices. Anup Murarka, director of technology strategy for the platform business unit at Adobe, told me new TV models with some Flash-enabling technology would be hitting the U.S. market by the end of 2009, although most new features won’t be available until early 2010.

The home invasion, which may have the effect of shaking up the hidebound TV industry, is a clear win for Adobe over Microsoft, which has also had to content with recent struggles affecting the performance of Silverlight, its version of the video player.

In a series of setbacks for Microsoft, Major League Baseball this year abandoned Silverlight for its Web casts of baseball games in favor of Flash, and Silverlight has also been unstable running Netflix movies through Mozilla Firefox and Apple’s Safari browsers. Now, Adobe has raced past Microsoft by signing agreements with the likes of cable TV provider Comcast and hardware vendors Intel and Broadcom. Home Internet use through non-traditional Web devices like TVs and set-top boxes is still a nascent phenomenon, but according to Kurt Scharf, principal analyst at Parks Associates, survey data shows that 1.5 million households are actively looking for Web-enabled TV. “That’s not a bad starting point,” he told me.

Scharf also noted that the new technology would have the effect of stimulating innovation among television manufacturers like Sony, Panasonic, and LG. “Being Web-capable is going to be a differentiating factor,” he told me.

Ben Bajarin, who follows consumer technology for consulting firm Creative Strategies, explained that TV manufacturers have been hesitant to add new features to their sets because they don’t want to deal with the complex user interface issues, particularly since much of consumers’ TV experience is controlled by service providers. He doesn’t see a lot changing where the user experience is concerned for another twelve to eighteen months, or until service providers and manufacturers see the market changing. Making Flash available for television is “one of the building blocks for the types of changes that are necessary, [and] that is starting to occur,” he told me.