Adobe Flash Vs Microsoft Silverlight

Flash technology is a free software provided by Adobe which is famous for its software specialized in photo and video editing. Countless websites are using this technology to let their users watch videos online.

According to a report in the New York Times, Adobe is expanding Flash to the television (TV) screen and this piece of news will soon be revealed by Adobe at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas.

Shantanu Narayen, the CEO of Adobe, said that TV sets and top boxes that support Flash would be available on the US market later this year (2009). With the introduction of Flash, users would be able to view the same videos on their TV screens, computers and phones.

Bud Albers, the CTO of Disney, showed his company’s support to Flash on the TV by saying “Coming generations of consumers clearly expect to get their content wherever they want on it, on any device, when they want it. This gets us where we want to go.”

Flash is Adobe’s most profitable technology in the moment. Adobe reported an income of $871.8 million in 2008 and a revenue of $3.6 billion. Flash technology is employed in 80% of web videos and 98% of all computers have Flash installed. By letting media creators make Flash video and design applications, the software sold is generating tremendous profit for the company.

Silverlight, which has greater support for HD 1080p video content as claimed by Microsoft, is a product of Microsoft used to substitute Flash.

Brad Becker from Microsoft, who is also a former Adobe executive emphasized the importance of HD capability. Every standard video to be played on TV would call for that in its form format. “I can’t imagine what could be more important on a television than high video quality.”

Microsoft may just be structuring the connection between the PC and the TV more successfully. Adobe should finally be expecting a tough competition after all these years.

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