Adobe Feeds Apollo Ecosystem With New Internet Video Player
Today Adobe announced the launch of the Adobe Media Player, a desktop app that enables consumers to view high quality video whether they are online or offline. It is also designed for content owners to distribute, track and monetize their video. Built on their Apollo framework, the Adobe Media Player is cross-platform and based on open standards. The Adobe Media Player leverages other Adobe tools such as the Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Flash CS3 Professional, Adobe Flash Media Server 2, and the Adobe Media Encoder. For the end user, the video player can be used to create media channels via RSS, as well as for video downloads and streaming. Adobe is previewing the player at the National Association of Broadcasters trade show today and it will be available in the Fall of 2007.
More importantly from Adobe’s strategic plan, this is an attempt from Adobe to feed the ecosystem around Apollo and make end users more comfortable and knowledgeable about Apollo’s capabilities. Their path to success relies on developing and encouraging the development of compelling applications that add value to the average consumer. Additionally, this offering adds tremendous value to content owners - through various tools which include:
Analytics
Adobe gives content owners advanced tools to learn more about the ways that end users consume their media. It is all permission based via cookies, but I think Adobe is counting on a majority of the people enabling this feature. Most probably won’t be aware of the implications of enabling the cookies. The key innovation here is that it will track the media consumption both online and offline.
Content protection
Adobe offers streaming encryption, content integrity and identity based protection. This will make content publishers happy, because they'll have innovative tools that will allow them to build a legitimate business and not feel that their content is stolen. This is great for the small video producers of the world, who don't want to spend a lot of money protecting their content.
More enhanced montetization
Adobe gives content owners more flexible options over advertising and monetizing the media. Adobe Media Player heavily leverages RSS - content owners can feed ads via RSS and overlay ads or branding in many different ways. In seeing a demo, I saw a couple of ads that appeared. I was surprised at how non-intrusive they were and how it didn’t disturb the flow of my video experience.
Customization
One of the cool things I was able to see was a great deal of skins and customization that gave publishers an opportunity to really enhance their brand equity. Going from channel to channel, the level of detail and difference between the channels was impressive.
Conclusion
Adobe is getting into the Desktop Media Player business, which means they are competing with Microsoft's Windows Media Player directly. It is also a major opportunity for Adobe to feed the Apollo ecosystem and show people the limitations of traditional desktop software.
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but has anybody noticed??
Sure people have noticed, http://www.codeapollo is becoming a huge portal for early Apollo developers. We had 100+ users register in its first month. I'd say people are starting to notice and wanting to get in the niche quickly. Lots of demo apps accumulating already.
This is really cool -- someone who is big enough to finally compete with iTunes.
I think this will make Apple compete on features. Adobe will innovate, Apple will innovate. This should bring some good features into the marketplace.
Also, of course, all these services are competing with cable TV (who can't be too happy with that). I was reading an article by Shelly Palmer, and he's been calling these services "over the top" delivery -- video that flows over the cable wire, but doesn't come from the cable company.
It's an interesting concept, if you really get it -- and it could mean that (in the future) a different set up people will get paid for all this content.
Of course, I don't expect cable TV to go down without a fight.
Becca
This is very interesting, it goes to show the true potential behind Apollo. Also am interested to see if this "lite DRM" carries over to Flash where major content providers could finally be able to use Flash video.
I'm guessing this media player will support all Windows Media Player files. Do you know if there will be a demo released? Apollo can have all sorts of features and goodies listed with their program, but the real test is when consumers get to test it out for themselves, especially streaming videos online.
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