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May 8, 2008
Adobe Media Player
With the recent release of Adobe Media Player, its clear that the San Jose based company hopes to challenge Apple's seemingly unassailable hold on the new media marketplace.
AMP version 1.0 offers streaming video from established content producers such as CBS, MTV and Comedy Central. There are also shows from smaller internet based production companies like Revision3 and Wizzard Media. For geeky-types who can't get enough of Photoshop and Illustrator how-tos, there's a whole channel (Adobe TV) dedicated to tutorials.
In addition to streaming video, AMP's use of Adobe's new AIR software means that users can watch content both on and offline.
Why should you care?
For starters, having only one media player (iTunes) dominate the player market is bad for media consumers as well as content producers. Browsing podcasts in iTunes is akin to finding a summer movie that doesn't contain at least one exploding helicopter: possible, but highly unlikely.
Podcast producers have long complained about Apple's Billboard-like ranking system which has increasingly promoted high-budget/mainstream fare over low-budget shows of similar quality.
Similarly, podcasts which fail to be 'featured' on the front page of the iTunes store tend to vanish into obscurity, or can be downloaded exclusively from the producer's website (much the same thing).
Add to this AMPs AIR-driven fast loading times and aesthetic appeal, the benefits for both consumers and producers are obvious.
Conspicuous in their absence from this first release are features such as social networking (eg. the ability to embed content in a user's webpage), audio-only podcasts as well as the ability for podcasters to submit shows as they would with iTunes. These are slated for inclusion in subsequent versions.
You'll find the software here (free download).
Posted by Marcus at May 8, 2008 3:23 PM
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