Flash video… the future is bright?
5 01 2007Somewhat to my surprise I have to admit it has been video that has led to the greatest deployment of Flash based content in the last few years. With big players like Google, YouTube and MySpace using it and people’s insatiable lust for seeing someone getting a ball kicked in the face or a teenager singing karaoke to the latest pop jingle with a hairbrush for a mic — we are all enjoying a greatly increased Flash Player install base.
Now, what I think is an interesting development is home entertainment and game consoles getting browsers embedded - more often than not supporting some version of the Flash Player that allows FLV playback.
Websites currently offering video playback using Windows Media, Real Media or Quicktime have a choice to make, on whether to ignore this growing market or take advantage of Flash technology. Technically speaking the decision isn’t all too difficult to make but there is more to it than meets the eye…
DRM is lurking around the corner, a concept cursed by many and defended to the teeth by others. Digital Rights Management is becoming increasingly widely used and for many organizations the checklist on whether or not to use a technology includes the question of whether it supports any form of DRM. Does this mean we can expect it to creep into the Flash Player at some point in the future, who knows?
In my opinion DRM as it is currently being used is plain and simple abuse of technology and digital content publishers who use it more often than not see their target audience as a threat to their intellectual property rather than an asset to their business.
How come we have a presumption of innocence in criminal law and the music industry can get away with charging hardware manufacturers for the presumed piracy of its users, how can the EU levy a tax on the sale of blank CD’s assuming those are used to illegally copy audio, video and software.
More about this, the Microsoft Zune fiasco and the possible impact on Flash platform technologies in the next episode of the Skip Intro podcast.
If you’d like to have your voice heard about this topic feel free to leave a voice message on the following Google Talk account for the podcast: skipintroshow at gmail.com
Don’t get me started… you can count on Adobe and Flash Video having some DRM “solution” soon enough. I’m glad that so far, there hasn’t been some terrible implementation. So much of the motivation is misguided and makes as much sense to me as drug testing of employees. It’s not like I want a crackhead flying the next airplane I board but to think that you have employees that you don’t trust is a starting point that has even worse consequences than a few drug users.
Anyway, it’s safe to say no DRM solution works unless it’s hardware based. So, one wonders exactly what the success of a half-solution. It gives content owners a false sense of security. The hardware solutions require cooperation among the soft and hardware folks… and an emerging standard. Good luck seeing that any day soon.
For me, I can’t even play CDs in my stereo… I rip them (all of which I own or borrow from the public library) and then play them through the killer squeezebox from slimdevices.com.
Anyway, I’m not really sure I have a specific point except I’m wishing for Adobe–when they do come out with a DRM solution–to please not mess it up. All you need is one good backfire for the whole thing to really hurt Flash.
I know MS has had some Flash scattered about their site for a long time, but I found this use particularly amusing:
http://soapbox.msn.com/
What’s amusing Michael, that it’s Flash video? If you launch MSNBC.com in Firefox and then click a video you often see it in Flash.
Hi Phillip,
I’m not a big msn user and didn’t realize they’ve been serving flv for firefox for a while. While I’m not a MS loather, I find it odd and a waste of storage that this would mean they have to store two formats of video (in different bandwidths each) for every video across their sites.
ps. i can’t think of you without thinking about a newsletter game now
Happy New Year!
//Michael.