Adobe has launched Adobe Media Player 1.0 and Adobe TV. This is a desktop media player that allows Flash downloads and content subscriptions in 1080p, 720p or 480i. It offers content from CBS, MTV, Universal Music Group, PBS, Scripps and CondeNet; you can subscribe to video feeds via RSS, and via catalog.
Adobe describes it a cross between TV Guide and a DVR. Critics say that is just a video RSS aggregator tuned for Flash media.
The player, which works on Windows and Mac, can be downloaded here.
Adobe TV is a network in the player with programming related to Adobe products.
Internet style news coverage
Want to do a cheap, Internet style, news coverage of any big event? Take example of people of Lost Remote, who attended this year Las Vegas NAD TV’s biggest convention, and blog the event, shoot video, post phone, did live-brogging sesions and send Twitter alerts.
Even they encouraged attendees to submit their own photos (on Flickr group) and videos (on a YouTube group.).
Flickr hosts video
Yahoo’s Flickr now is hosting video. Its player is basic, good looking, Vimeo-style. Uploads are limited to 150MB in size, and you can’t choose your own video thumbnail. A group of Flickr users are really unhappy.
The site is not really aiming to compete with the majors players in the online television space. They are sticking to its roots, encouraging “video snapshots” that play a similar function as photographs.
Embedding video pays off
The power of embeddable video is clear. MSNBC.com, the first major news network to offer embeddable video player, says it set a video record: 125.7 million streams on 7 million unique users, which it says beats CNN.com.
In addition, Hulu.com, launched a month ago, has said that its video players have been embedded 105,000 times on 12,000 sites.
Microsoft improves its IPTV software
Microsoft is improving its MediaRoom interactive TV software that’s being marketed to telcos with IPTV services. MediaRoom manages a user’s shows, photos and songs, similar to MediaCenter, but on a more powerful level. A sample: in Nascar, viewers can have the ability to select different cameras, microphones and read driver track profiles (the data is pulled via an XML feed from Nascar’s site).
Another application that is coming: voting in polls, play video clips straight from a website, or even integrating social functionalities like Facebook, so you can view your friends, what they are watching, chat with them, rate shows and recommend shows to your friends. It is like building social profile around television (which opens up a new world of targeted advertising.) Depending on how quickly IPTV is getting rolled out, we will see all this functionalities working.
The Associated Press Syndication Model takes step in the right direction
AP’s 1,800+ Online Video Network affiliates can now syndicate video and get a cut of the ad revenue generated by their shared clips. With this new feature, local media can be compensated for their original stories.
Blockbuster’s set-top box
Blockbuster is developing a set-top box to stream movies directly to TV sets. The effort, powered by recently-acquired Movielink, would compete with Apple TV, TiVo, Xbox, Netflix, Vudu, to name a few. It seems to us that these browser-based solutions that lock users into their service, while waiting to be able to stream HD content, make no sense.
