Now playing: Adobe Media Player 1.0
Adobe Media Player (AMP) is like an RSS reader for video. Some videos can only be seen after advertising.
(Credit: Adobe)Clarification: Adobe TV is one of many channels available from the Adobe catalog.
Adobe Systems on Wednesday plans to release Adobe Media Player (AMP), a free download for playing Flash-based Web videos on Macs or PCs. (Get it from Download.com for Windows or Mac.)
Written with Adobe's AIR, AMP is a hybrid online/offline application that lets people subscribe to different video Webcasts. Adobe has signed on some initial partners including CBS, PBS, MTV Networks, Universal Music Group, CondeNet, and Scripps Networks. (See my colleague Rafe Needleman's review of AMP on Webware.)
The videos are either streamed from the content producer's Web site or they can be downloaded. Adobe will host a catalog on its site where people can find videos, including one on Adobe-related content called Adobe TV. Because it's written with AIR, people can be offline or online when they watch.
Initially, many of the videos available will have advertising attached to them. Using Adobe's digital rights management server, content producers are able to put controls on their media.
Later, Adobe intends to enhance the client software so that different business models can be used, such as paying to download a video or renting videos, said Ashley Still, a senior product manager at Adobe.
There are already a number of existing media players, like iTunes. But Adobe thinks that having its own player will be strategic for a number of reasons, Still said.
PBS is one of the content partners to use the Adobe Media Player.
(Credit: Adobe)Adobe is trying to garner more revenue from online services; the company will be sharing revenue from advertising with content producers.
The player complements Adobe's multimedia content-creation multimedia products and Adobe wants to make sure there is a high-quality way to deliver that video to consumers, Still said.
"This is the first time Adobe is participating directly in the playback of Internet video content," she said.
With the 1.0 version, the player will only display Flash content, but Adobe could add support for other formats, Still said.
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin. 
that used to be popular but we hardly hear anything about it now -
REAL. Sure, there are enough users to support media players other
than from Apple and MS, and the media format is not yet (though
the portal is) in the sights of Amazon, Google, and other services.
We'll see how long this lasts...
Flash has always been hostile to the end user. And now Adobe has take that hostility to a new level.
"Initially, many of the videos available will have advertising attached to them. Using Adobe's digital rights management server, content producers are able to put controls on their media."
DRM is for the birds. I will never use, pay for, or subscribe to any content that is crippled with DRM.
My computer, my rules.
Screw Adobe and thier BS software, I use to enjoy using their software, but now their company simply panders for the media ad outlets.
Oh, and flash visual quality is trash. Um, why would I be interested?
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Frankly, I feel extremely misled by the description of AMP on its product page. Calling it a Media Player and all the talk of being able to watch what you want, when you want and streaming and downloading video - all you can *actually* do is watch stuff from the signed up content providers, or that you've already got on your hard drive (and have presumably got a player for already, that will almost certainly take up a lot less screen estate than this beast). Oh, and there's some mention of adding RSS feeds of videos - though looking at other posts here whether that works is debatable. Anything else might as well not exist.
I had hoped that it would be a way of watching embedded streamed flash videos without having to have the whole webpage that they're on open - this would give you just the video, so would be more compact, and would be resizeable so you could watch it at any size you liked, not just the default or full-screen. After all, coming from Adobe, there would be no problem about having to reverse engineer the RTMP format.
Maybe even (though I thought it unlikely) being able to download videos where the provider permitted it - no worry though, there are other tools for that.
Also - the design. A massive window, not resizeable at all except to minimise / maximise. Appalling contrast - it's like being in a cave, everything's so black. I couldn't even see that there were scroll bars - just waved my mouse around where I thought they should be.
It's like having the worst, most useless part of RealPlayer (the download centre, or whatever they call it) and not the player itself. This is *not* a media player - a client, maybe.
Frankly, the only reason I can see for installing this is if there is some content that it has that you can't get anywhere else. If not, don't waste your time - use something else.
Like I say, I'm disappointed. I feel like I've been lied to and had my time wasted. Unless I'm *really* missing something??
Now we'll see how easily it uninstalls...
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...and I want this now. Please, someone tell me this is going to happen. I saw a hint somewhere in a blog somewhere that this may be in the works. If it's being Beta trialed, sign me up please.
- by RTShaw July 20, 2008 2:13 AM PDT
- Glad i read these before installing it. I certainly will pass this up.
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