New Flash Player Has Streaming HD Support

Cool! The new Adobe Flash Player will have streaming HD support, which will benefit our own Dr. Bill.TV Videoblog! Very cool! The better the streaming video gets, the better and more comprehensive the content will become! The future IS IPTV! (Internet Protocol Television)

New Flash player brings streaming HD video support

“The final build of Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3 — or more affectionately known as ‘Moviestar’ — has been released, adding support for high-definition content. It’s been a long time since YouTube first brought online video to the masses, and now its users are clamoring for better quality. The last couple years have seen an uptick in broadband speeds as well, meaning it’s only logical that Adobe would expand the capabilities of Flash, which has become the dominant delivery method for Web video.But the high-definition support in Flash Player 9 Update 3 is actually a side effect of adding a new video codec called H.264. This is the same standard employed by by Apple’s QuickTime and the video content it sells, and supported as a encoding choice for Blu-ray and HD DVD movies. On the audio said, Flash now supports High Efficiency AAC. Perhaps more importantly, Adobe has enabled the hardware acceleration mode of many graphics cards, when going to full-screen mode. Earlier Flash versions relied on software acceleration, which hindered the player’s ability to scale a video in the best quality possible. In addition, full-screen mode is now enabled on Linux platforms for the first time. NBC Universal and News Corp’s online video startup Hulu is the first partner to offer Flash video in high-definition, although its HD library is currently limited to trailers and sample clips from Universal and Fox Studios. Adobe’s upcoming Media Player software will arrive early next year, once more HD content is available. Adobe Media Player is designed to let users find and watch streaming Flash video outside the Web browser.”