Adobe Flash Format Comes To TV, Set Top Boxes

Software powerhouse Adobe is planning to take over your lounge by bringing its ubiquitous multimedia platform, Flash, to televisions, set-top boxes, optical players and every major content distribution device.

Adobe is already dominating the desktop environment, where Microsoft's Silverlight has been trying to break its stranglehold for a couple of years already. It said to be installed on almost 98 percent of all computers (ed: probably desktop ones, certainly not servers).

Ditto on the mobile front where only Apple's iPhone is reluctant to adopt the defacto standard for content distribution. An estimated 1 billion mobile phones currently have Flash lite installed with that number expected to double by next year.

The company is planning to work with a number of hardware and services vendors to implement Flash support natively in hardware. Intel, STMicroelectronics,  NXP Semiconductors and Sigma Designs are amongst the big brand names on the list.

It has also lined up a number of content partners - at least in the US to provide with enough material to start up with. You'll find household names like Comcast, Disney, Netflix and The New York Times Company in this all star setup. Ultimately, Adobe's ambition for Flash is to bypass the need for a PC completely, just like TiVO or Netflix.

You can follow ITProPortal.com on Twitter @ http://www.twitter.com/itproportal