Adobe Flash Vs Microsoft Silverlight
Adobe is a worldwide renowned name which practically stands for quality photo and video editing software. It is however its freebie, Flash, that is used most extensively. We are actually depending on Flash technology when we view videos on a lot of websites and web servers.
Flash is now moving on to the TV screen. This is to be made public in the forthcoming National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, according to a report in the New York Times.
Shantanu Narayen, the CEO of Adobe, said that TV sets and top boxes that support Flash would be available on the US market later this year (2009). With the introduction of Flash, users would be able to view the same videos on their TV screens, computers and phones.
Bud Albers, the CTO of Disney, said that his company supports the idea of extending Flash to televisions. He commented that “Coming generations of consumers clearly expect to get their content wherever they want on it, on any device, when they want it. This gets us where we want to go.”
Apart from the users, Adobe benefits the most from the extension. In 2008, Adobe reported an income of $871.8 million and a revenue of $3.6 million. It is making a huge profit from Flash by selling Flash application building software as well as video building software to media creators. It is not surprising that Flash can be found on nearly all computers and Flash users watch 80% of web videos by using this technology.
Silverlight, which has greater support for HD 1080p video content as claimed by Microsoft, is a product of Microsoft used to substitute Flash.
Microsoft commented that HD capability would become the mainstream format for videos in the future. Brad Becker from Microsoft (who is a former executive of Adobe) said he “can’t imagine what could be more important on a television than high video quality.”
Adobe Flash, having almost no direct competitor for years, finally faces some challenges as Microsoft joins the competition of bridging the gap between computers and televisions with the introduction of Silverlight.
