Time Warner and Adobe Get Together – HBO Coming in Flash?

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I’m traveling this week but I got a heads up on a press release for our partnership with Time Warner. I haven’t had time to ask many questions, but I liked Liz Gannes’ post. At a broad level, we’ll be working with them on things like DRM and analytics, two very important aspects of the rich media experience. I’m still not a big fan of DRM for things that I own, but when it comes to streaming content that you’re getting for free or renting, then DRM is an important part of the ecosystem. And we’ve been working hard on a DRM solution that is as transparent and seamless as the Flash Player itself. With this partnership I hope we’ve got some new lines of communication into the content creators so we can come up with a solution that works for them and the users.

Andy Plesser over at Beet.TV has some additional information up and an interview with Jennifer Taylor of Adobe. I’m on a train with crappy wifi so I can’t get the whole thing to play, but it seems like it might fill in some of the gaps.

I was also really stoked about the line regarding HBO and Flash:

“HBO will soon relaunch www.hbo.com making extensive use of the Adobe Flash Platform.”

I’ll try to get more info on what this actually means, but it would be awesome if you could view HBO content online in the browser with the Flash Player.

Related posts:

  1. It Must Be Secret Party Time at Adobe
  2. This One Time, at Flash Camp….I Got Flash CS4
  3. Flash Video Coming to Mobile Phones
  4. So the iPhone is Coming on June 29th, Will it Have Flash?
  5. AIR Linux Coming Later This Year
  • Lawrence

    That’s a nice win for Adobe. I have to be perfectly honest with you though, I prefer to watch online video in full screen mode when available and when I do I find that Flash doesn’t quite cut it. No bashing intended but my best experiences have been with the Move Networks player. I think they’ve set the bar for quality and I guess I kind of got spoiled by that. Hopefully Flash Player can reach that level someday.

  • ryanstewart

    Where’s the best Move implementation? ABC.com? I’ve been pretty happy with the HD option on Hulu (and even some of the HD on YouTube). But I haven’t actually watched much in the way of Move content, so I should do more comparison.

    =Ryan

  • Lawrence

    I think ABC.com HD would be considered one of their best. Usually if I forget to record something from ABC or FOX I’ll watch it from those sites. Hulu is very nice, very watchable. Still, I think that if I could find the same video in a Move Player I’d watch that first if I had the choice. Anyway, I hadn’t been to the Movenetworks.com site in a while. They must have redone their intro. It’s pretty stunning. Of course the bit rate is adaptive to your connection speed so quality will vary per user. I would start there.

  • http://www.bobjim.com Ryan Campbell

    Crazy I assumed ABC used flash to stream the video.. the Move Player is excellent

  • NB

    We want to get rid of our direct tv service for a few months to save money. We are keeping high speed cable though, for work and watching hulu etc. Wish there were a way to pay to watch HBO shows without needing time warner cable or direct tv. I know in these economic times we are not the first family to ditch the tv service and keep only internet. HBO should keep this trend in mind.

  • http://www.zatun.com Abhinav

    This will be fun. I think we might have a Flash movie screening a multiplex one day.