Digital Media

A mock-up of what Adobe Flash for TVs would look like.

(Credit: Adobe)

From the PC to the TV, Adobe Systems wants to bring rich Web animation and video into consumers' living rooms.

The company will on Monday announce its latest version of its Flash multimedia platform that will essentially put its technology in Internet connected TVs, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players, and other digital home devices. The main purpose of the TV and consumer electronics optimized Flash is to allow viewers to see high-definition video, interactive applications and new user interfaces right on their TVs.

As part of the announcement, the company revealed a number of partners that plan to use the technology, including, Intel, Comcast, Disney Interactive, Netflix, Atlantic Records, and the New York Times Company.

Until now, Adobe's Flash Player has mainly been used on computers to make animation and video from Web sites like YouTube available in a Web browser. And the company has been very successful in this market. About 80 percent of online videos worldwide are viewed using Adobe Flash technology, according to comScore.

The company has also adapted its technology to create a mobile version of Flash that is used on smartphones. The mobile version lets people watch Flash-enabled video on the go. Now Adobe is turning its attention to the living room and big screen HD TVs. This means that people could have full access to the entire YouTube library of video on their TVs instead of a subset that has been specially encoded for TV viewing.

"There are some products and services that offer a subset of online video for TVs," said Anup Murarka, director of technology strategy and partner development for Adobe's Flash Platform Business Unit. "But they don't provide all the content. For example, a lot of devices play back YouTube content. But they can't offer all the videos on YouTube."

Developers will also be able to create "widgets" for TVs to help bring Web content onto the TV screen. Widgets are specially designed Web applications that can easily be added to consumer electronics devices.

Yahoo is also offering widget technology for TVs, which it co-developed with Intel. The Yahoo Widget Channel provides access to Flickr, Yahoo News, Yahoo Weather and Yahoo Finance, USA Today, YouTube, eBay and Showtime Networks, among others. Motorola, Samsung, and Toshiba are all planning to add Yahoo Widgets on some of their new TVs.

Murarka said that Yahoo is not really competing with Adobe. He pointed out that both Adobe and Yahoo are working with Intel, and he said the Flash technology was actually complimentary to what Yahoo is doing with its Widget Channel.

"Yahoo supports Flash on desktops and our hope is that they will support Flash in TVs as well," he said. "We see Flash as being valuable in a number of new frame works."

Murarka wouldn't say which consumer electronics makers plan to use the new version of Flash, but the technology is available to device makers and application developers now. And Flash-enabled TVs and set-tops should be out later this year.

Residents of the Redding and Chico areas of Northern California who had still been watching analog TV were moved to digital channels on Monday as the CBS, NBC, and Fox stations permanently switched to digital-only TV two months ahead of the national mandate.

Station executives said on Tuesday that the transition went well, except for those households that didn't have an analog-to-digital converter.

"We did a good job about getting the word out about converter boxes early," said Doug Holroyd, general manager of Fox KCVU, which serves as many as 12,000 households.

The station gave away converter boxes at a town hall last week and did as much as it could to inform the community about what viewers need to do to guarantee continued service during the transition, he said.

The U.S. government is providing coupons for $40 off the price of a typically $60 converter box, but the coupons take 30 days to arrive in the mail and expire after 90 days, said John Stall, general manager for the CBS and NBC affiliates, which serves more than 30,000 households in Chico and Redding.

With the February 17 deadline quickly approaching, the window for using coupons to buy converter boxes is closing. Many people are likely to wait until the last minute to buy the boxes, running the risk that they will see empty shelves and have their TV left in the dark on that day.

That, in part, was why Fox KCVU decided apply to transition early to digital-only TV, Holroyd said. But it also lets the station change receivers on mountain tops before they get too snowy and difficult to reach, he said, adding that an analog transmitter in Eureka was dying anyway. In granting the request for the early transition, the FCC felt the area's mountainous terrain and sparser population made it an ideal test market, Holroyd added.

When the local station cuts the analog signal off, people also will have to set their digital tuners to do a re-scan to find the digital station, and if the station is moving the digital signal to a different channel, people may also need to delete the original channel on the scanner, Stall said.

The transition will mostly affect smaller markets and rural areas with households that aren't using cable or satellite service. An estimated 18 percent of the households in the country will need to use digital converter boxes, according to Nielsen.

"The digital signal offers a better picture, but it is also a little tricky," Stall said. "It can get blocked out by trees; it is line-of-sight...if you put an antenna on your roof you shouldn't have a problem."

Residents in Chico and Redding appear to have fared better than people in Wilmington, N.C., who were switched over to digital in September in the first real-world analog-to-digital trial. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission hotline and phones at the local Wilmington stations were inundated with calls.

For more details on what consumers need to do read "What you need to know about the digital TV switch."