Andrew Shorten @ Adobe

Following a recent operation on my back to correct a slipped disc I’ve had to spend a considerable amount of time laying down; this in turn lead me to really use some of the TV catch-up and on demand services offered by the UK broadcasters on my laptop as I didn’t have convenient access to the TV.

Impressed at quite how much content I could watch over the internet, I then started to seriously explore options for getting internet-delivered content through our main 42″ Toshiba LCD screen; the thought of being able to explore a back-catalogue of programmes that are automatically stored by the broadcaster, rather than relying upon me to setup recordings using Sky+ was particularly appealing.

So, off I went (with a slightly improved back)… and I have to say the whole process was actually far easier than I’d imagined; I bought a new Mac Mini with Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, connected it to the TV using DVI->HDMI and audio cables, added it to the wireless network and then installed Flash Player and Adobe AIR. Done, nothing else required.

Adding Flash Player enabled me to watch streamed content from all the BBC channels via iPlayer, from Channel 4’s On Demand service 4OD and from Demand Five, Five’s catch-up service – all of which combined gave me a choice from 1000s of hours worth of TV.

With the addition of Adobe AIR I was able to use the BBC’s service to download and store programmes for an extended period of time (30 days rather than the 7 for the streaming service) – I’m hoping that in the medium term the BBC might enhance this offering further to automatically download series that I like so that they’re ready for instant playback, but I guess I’ll have to wait for that

If that wasn’t enough I was also able to watch paid-for TV programmes and select from both new-release and classic films from BlinkBox, a UK-based service that streams content using the Flash Platform.

In terms of free programming, the BBC service undoubtedly offered the best quality with regular streams at 1500kbps and HD streams at 3500kbps – both looked really good even scaled up to 1920 x 1080 and were certainly indistinguishable from the quality offered by over-the-air or satellite TV. In fact, if you’ve ever questioned Flash Player performance on a Mac, take a look at full-screen streamed HD content playing back on a low-spec Mac Mini – it is really impressive. Only Channel 4’s service left me disappointed in terms of quality, the video really isn’t encoded at high enough a bit-rate to watch on a large TV without obvious distortion, but maybe there are commercial reasons for this decision.

I’ve been running this setup for about a week now and am still really impressed by how the experiment has gone, so impressed in fact that I’ve come to several conclusions:

• other than for watching breaking news I have no need for broadcast TV
• internet-connected TVs are the future and the future is not that far off
• multi-screen services really do need discrete user interfaces – one size fits all does not work

Each of these conclusions raised a number of interesting thoughts… firstly, I’m amazed that the recent Digital Britain report didn’t propose a radical redefinition of the BBC license fee. Right now, a household requires a TV license only to watch broadcast TV in the UK, not to own a television – using this setup and switching to an alternative source of ‘live’ news I’d technically no longer require a TV license. My aim is not to evade paying for a TV license, but rather to suggest that the ‘value’ is in the content that I’m consuming, not the distribution method. It feels to me like a re-think will be required as to how the UK population are asked to pay for the (generally) great output that the BBC produces.

The main factors I see that will significantly affect consumer take up of “next generation TV services” are provision of high-speed broadband (I am fortunate to get 7.2Mbps out of the quoted 8Mbps on my phone line) and cost of the hardware required to access and playback content. For the tech-savvy, purchasing a Mac Mini (or if you must, a low-cost Windows Media Center-equipped PC) and connecting it up is all well and good, but really this needs to be “plug and play” or built in to the TV itself – hopefully the work that Adobe is doing with set-top box and TV manufacturers as part of the Open Screen Project will help to make watching Flash-delivered video content just that simple and projects such as the proposed BBC “Canvas” platform will make low-cost, wide-scale distribution of network-equipped set-top boxes possible.

Finally, whilst I’m happy to persevere with using a wireless keyboard and mouse to navigate web pages to access content, we are going to need specific UX expertise for TV-based interfaces, just as we will for mobile – again, I think Adobe can help by providing frameworks (Flex) and tooling that provides consistency in the process for creating, developing and testing user interfaces, but a one-size-fits-all approach design isn’t going to cut it. My wife still isn’t completely sold on my new “toy” because it is harder to use than the Sky+ PVR…

There are no doubt exciting times ahead for designers and developers who’ll see the range of content, services and devices continue to expand, but equally there are going to challenges for those who provide infrastructure to support this vision and those who need to charge for content.

So, if you’ve got some spare cash and want to get Flash on your TV today then this is a great setup; wait a bit longer and hopefully it will come as standard right out of the box

There is a three part video interview with Shantanu Narayen, Adobe’s CEO, up on FT.com today as part of their “View from the Top” series, in which they talk to CEOs about news and trends within their respective industry.

In Part 2 of the interview, the conversation is focused on the adoption of Flash on mobile phones and the competition between Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, as well as Adobe’s strategy for getting new technology adopted as a standard and cloud computing. There is some interesting discussion about Adobe’s relationship with Apple and Google.

You can watch that video here, from which you’ll also find links to the other parts of the interview.

There is also an article in today’s FT and available online which summaries some of the discussion points.

On the same day as Adobe announced that the final release of AIR 1.5 for Linux is available for download, the BBC have launched iPlayer desktop for Mac, Windows and Linux users, built on Adobe AIR.

BBC iPlayer desktop allows those in the UK to download their favourite BBC programmes and watch them when they are offline. The new desktop edition compliments the existing streaming service, which is available in the browser using Flash Player.

The application was built using the Flex 3 framework, runs on top of AIR 1.5 and makes use of the Flash Media Rights Management Server (FMRMS) to DRM-protect content which is downloaded to the user’s desktop.

The BBC iPlayer really demonstrates the power of the Flash Platform, enabling users to enjoy high quality video content on the web and on the desktop, across all major browsers and operating systems – congratulations to the BBC for launching so quickly after we delivered AIR 1.5 for Mac, Windows and Linux users.

If you’re in the UK you can download BBC iPlayer desktop here (note: you MUST be signed up as an iPlayer Labs user before the download option on iPlayer content will appear on the website).

For those outside the UK, there are some screen shots of the application below… I’m looking forward to playing with this some more tonight

I don’t normally get drawn into what Microsoft are saying about Adobe, but it’s obviously a bit quiet in Redmond since the launch of Silverlight 2 and so it’s time for some Adobe-bashing…

Apparently we got caught out spreading FUD to get people to use Flash over Silverlight; “scaring” people by highlighting that it’s penetration not cash which is what ultimately matters to broadcasters. With 98% penetration of Flash Player 9 it makes sense to choose Flash if you want your customers to see your content on the web. Fact.

Meanwhile, we are holding press conferences solely to brief journalists “that Silverlight is unsuccessful and we’re not worried about it”. Yes, that *must* have been the full context of the briefing; nothing to do with the recent launch of Flash Player 10 and all the new capabilities that over 90% of web-connected computers will be able to run within 9 months. 

Anyway, it’s good to know that Microsoft really understand their competition and never spread FUD themselves – take this recently published interview. If you’re using the Flash platform today, then according to Microsoft all you’re doing is “building cartoons”. Nope, you certainly can’t build scalable, secure applications that are maintainable… oh, wait, you mean like Piknik, SlideRocket and blist, or those built by SAP, Intuit and Oracle. 

At least when we compare and contrast competing technologies we try do so with integrity, by comparing current versions and being open about what the strengths and weaknesses of each are.

Maybe some of the Microsoft guys should come to MAX next week and see what the Flash Platform is really capable of… there’s still time to register.

John O’Donnovan has an interesting post over on the BBC Internet blog talking about how the BBC’s Olympic content has been consumed over different media channels, including web, desktop and mobile.

Whilst I recommend that you read the entire post, especially for the insight John provides into how the BBC publishes content across different platforms, there are some statistical highlights I wanted to share here that really demonstrate how the BBC are putting Adobe’s technology to work.

Like most of the worldwide online Olympics coverage, notably bar NBC’s output in the US, the BBC used Flash Player to deliver both live and on-demand video content.

Whilst the BBC has just started publishing H.264 content on the iPlayer service, the Olympics coverage was output using the ON2 VP6 codec at 384kbps – even so, the quality and performance of the video, together with a choice of upto 7 streams, made for a really good online experience.

The sheer quantity of video content consumed through the BBC’s sport site is pretty amazing, and really shows how video on the web has taken a huge leap forward since the last Olympics in 2004 – here are some of the statistics (bare in mind that this is from just a UK audience):

• Nearly 40 million video streams served over the web
• Peak of 200,000 concurrent live and ondemand streams
• Over 6.5 million hours of Olympics video content consumed online
• Up to 5.5 million video clips watched each day

In addition, the BBC also launched a cross-OS desktop widget, running on Adobe AIR, that provided Olympics news and event alerts – this was installed by over 50,000 people and I think represents a solid start for the BBC’s use of this technology.

Further statistics on both video consumption and the AIR application downloads will be published on the BBC Internet blog once the Olympics are over.

Looking forward to the 2012 Olympics in London, one can only predict that the quantity and quality of online video content will continue to increase.