JD on EP

Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee has info on Adobe Media Player (codename "Philo") beyond what I've seen in other reports.

Adobe Media Player, which has been called "Philo" both internally and in early demos, looks like it could be an able competitor to internet TV efforts like Joost and video aggregation tools like Democracy. However, Adobe is not going that direction. The company is being careful not to set up its own proprietary platform, store, or even serial video index.

That's because Adobe doesn't want to cause conflicts with its partners and customers, said Craig Barberich, group product manager for Adobe Dynamic Media Organization, in a call last week. "The media companies have a lot of questions about the other technology providers -- are they becoming media companies or becoming providers... We are not a media company," he explained...

Another business Adobe is not getting into is advertising, though the player will include tools for a wide variety of ad insertions, said Barberich: animation, pre-/post-mid-roll, overlay, and banner, all both offline and online. All content on the platform will be ad-supported; Adobe does not plan to include support for content sales, according to Barberich.

Robert Scoble has video interviews with members of the Dreamweaver, Flash, and Apollo teams. He also offers a 15-minute "highlights" version.

Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen has more beyond-the-PR info and personal interviews about Adobe Media Player, at Streaming Media.

Washington Post has info on unique properties of Adobe Media Player:

Analysts hailed the new Adobe Video player as a technology breakthrough by allowing consumers to download and carry video from the Web to computers to mobile phones, while ensuring programmers can deliver advertising and track video usage.

Rival video players such as Windows Media Player from Microsoft Corp., QuickTime from Apple Inc. and RealPlayer from RealNetworks Inc. run on a range of devices but have none of the offline tracking features.

"Adobe has created the first way for media companies to release video content, secure in the knowledge that advertising goes with it," Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey said.

(I'm guessing the mobile reference in there is to prior announcements and demos of the upcoming Adobe Flash Lite 3, which can decompress web video as well as device video.)

No mention of Silverlight?

Oddest quote I've seen this evening, from ZDNet:

Forest Key, director of product management in Microsoft's Server and Tools Division, said Silverlight will offer advantages over Flash. Windows that display streaming video within a browser page can be resized because Silverlight uses vector graphics, he said.

Thomas Claburn at InformationWeek has more quotes from Craig Baberich which set out the unique approach of Adobe Media Player: no proprietary advertising model, no proprietary audience model:

"We're not trying to become a media company," said Craig Baberich, group product manager for Adobe's Dynamic Media Organization. "We're more a Switzerland." ...

"We wanted to extend the browser eco-system to the desktop and provide new tools to media companies and consumers, to be social with the content," said Baberich...

As befits its platform agnosticism, Adobe is preaching brand neutrality. "We believe it should be an open system in which anyone can participate," said Baberich, who contrasts Adobe's approach with the tight control Apple maintains over iTunes. "This is about empowering the eco-system to be successful, not trying to create a proprietary system that controls the business."

Thus, Adobe Media Player lets content publishers determine how they want to "deliver, monetize, brand, track and protect" their content. Publishers can serve ads from ad networks like Atlas, Google, or Yahoo, for example, alongside their content if they choose. And they can control how their brand is presented in the player.

Lots of mentions of Silverlight including Streamingmedia.com, CNET and The Wall Stret Journal.

[jd sez: I charge for ads, bill is in the mail.... ;-) ]

As expected, the storylines mostly focus on Silverlight as the "Flash Killer" even though from what I've read of Microsoft's announcement, they are thinking about Silverlight as more of an extension to their .net platform (onto other OS's) than simply a competitor to Flash. I doubt they're dumb enough to think they're going to get the ubiquity of Flash anytime soon. Should be fun to watch but the media generated hype will get noisy.

Sorry but to be clear, I'm sure not making any money on this! I mentioned Silverlight because someone had asked "No mention of Silverlight yet?"

[jd sez: No worries, I was semi-facetious. ;-) btw, you're Mark? Nice to meet you. Jeff likes SVG, and pops up every now and then.]

Uhm.. I would not worry too much about something called SilverLight, they probably have to change name 3 or 4 times, logo and define exactly what it is supposed to do before shipping it. If it is true that Flash has 98% of penetration on desktop, I can't see really where the problem is, especially considering that the cross-os capabilities of SilverLight are yet to be proven/shown.

Deloir - although I agree that Adobe should't worry too much about Silverlight...at least for the short-term, the cross-plat capabilities have already been "proven" in that they already have the plug-in running on Mac and Windows in Firefox, Safari and IE. You can play with it yourself now if you want. I don't know the exact location and am too lazy to look but I'm sure it's pretty obvious where to find it on Microsoft.com or MSDN.

I agree with you, but Flash is not only a software, is a brand (the fact that Adobe is doing a good job at confusing what exactly is aimed at is another story). I don't think anything from MS will cut its legs, even Adobe before buying Macromedia attempted to get into the stream, eventually to give up (and buy MM). Again, in the same way I don't scream on how wonderful Apollo is until it will devlireved, I won't call SilverLight a Flash-killer until it will be delivered as well with all features promised inside.