Adobe Flash Technology Versus Microsoft Silverlight

Adobe, which is famous for its image and video editing softwares, is also the company that offers the Flash technology. Flash is utilized in millions of websites and it is the technology that enables videos to be viewed 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.

This extension is beneficial to the users as they can enjoy the same videos not only on their PCs or phones but also on TV screens. As Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen expected, televisions and set top boxes which support the Flash format may probably be launched into the US market at a later time in 2009.

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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