Adobe announces new media player

I’ll tell you what I want. I wish they would develop the technology that would allow the server side to be agnostic to the OS that wants to see the content.

For example, I use Linux. I wish we didn’t have to have Flash for Linux or Mac or Windows. Just let everything be on the server side. This way, the users aren’t responsible for having to download extraneous software. The browser is all I should have to have. I see this coming in a few years, but having it before then would be nice.

Wreck: ahh, so you want Microsoft and Mozilla to get along and build this stuff into the browser, huh? You do realize the APIs don’t exist in the browser to do video, right?

Personally Flash is the way most of us are going to go, unless we go with a player model like ABC.Com or stage6.divx.com or Joost is doing. But those aren’t really widespread as Flash is yet. Higher quality, though.

Actually, Scoble, in the Linux world, the browser can be compiled to inlcude the player. Go look at MPlayer embedded into Firefox. Happens everyday. Some Linux distros come with this already done, but all allow you to embed MPlayer as an option to Firefox. In Linux, I can watch DVDs in my browser if I want to.

What I’m desiring is that the browsers all come pre-compiled with support so all I have to do is just visit the site and not worry about having the required software onboard.

@wreck
But no matter what, your ideal browser will always be 1 step from being complete. There will always be 1 more format, 1 more bit of code, that didn’t get compiled into the browser.

Of course, one could ask the user to re-compile the browser every time a new plugin is released but that defeats the point of having a browser “come pre-compiled with support” for everything.

What I’m desiring is that the browsers all come pre-compiled with support so all I have to do is just visit the site and not worry about having the required software onboard.

Right. Who’s support?

WM? QuickTime? Flash?

Or do you just embed them ALL in the browser and ship 100+ MB browsers that support every video and audio format + all possible options in the browsers

John: not to mention you’d get sued if you did that cause many of these formats are proprietary and building in the codecs requires payment. Just cause some build of Linux is getting away with it doesn’t mean it will forever. Anyone remember the JPG lawsuits? I do.

Well, in Linux, thankfully, adding that one bit of code is rather trivial. At least I have the freedom to do so under Linux. Using anything other than BSD/Linux leaves one locked in.

I love Apple, but I hesitate to buy a Mac because I like my freedom. Something to think about…

Scoble,

What you’re missing is that Linux people don’t care. Who are you going to sue. These codes are reverse engineered by people in Brazil, Ghana, Germany, not by a single company. Linux is the great equalizer, and that’s the way it should be.

Sue who? The end users? Won’t happen. If that were the case, then every single Linux user would be sued because most have the so-called “illegal” libdvdcss code installed on their systems so they can watch DVDs without paying for the stupidly expensive decode software.

Hrrpmh, no ‘sky is falling’ talk from Cory? Odd the LOUD silence from the geeks on this, usually mentioning DRM, is akin to saying ‘The End is Near’. Now all I see are bloggers and vloggers mass sucking up. Funny, how if you put food (read: money) at their eye-level, the moral outrages suddenly disappear. Guess they are too busy jet-setting around, worrying about Global Warming…

Long-term: The DRM will backlash, people will just move to codec’s (as technically they already have) that allow editing and good compressional formats. If anything torrent and usenetters, will get more active.

Short-term – Publisher peace-of-mind, protects the casual markets from going pure Napster. Yet prevents Flash from breaking out into anything but middle markets. Adobe should rather, let third parties do the DRM. Custom player model becomes more dominant.

Christopher: I never had the knee jerk reaction to DRM that Cory did. In fact, I can see some purpose behind it.

But, give bloggers a chance to respond. THis news just broke two hours ago. Most of them are probably asleep or aren’t subscribed to my link blog.

This news just broke two hours ago.

So bloggers can out Twitter earthquakes, but something techie like this takes hours? And it’s been old news to me for eons, and I only half follow this rot, guess they need better sources.

I can see some purpose behind it.

With Apple offing DRM, and with even the mainstream circumventing or not watching DRM content, nows not exactly the time to preach that plank.

There is a web service that does some of this already (see below). http://www.enscramble.com

* Serves video files from a standard web server eliminating the need for and associated costs of specialized streaming servers
* Delivers content through a standard Adobe Flash Player
* Allows users to designate which websites the content will play on and for how long

The enterprise version of enScramble does the following:

* Supports higher quality video via the On2 codec
* Allows for easy integration into existing infrastructure and system architecture
*Increases the protection and encryption of the video on a per view basis (versus per piece of content)
*Includes tools for handling volume transactions