Adobe Flash Video To Soon Challenge Windows Media For Live Streaming

At the Streaming Media West show last year, I did a presentation entitled "Flash Versus Windows Media: How to Choose the Right Format". One of the purposes of my presentation was to compare the two formats on a factual basis. Not which format has better codecs or compression but rather highlighting what each format did or did not support, like live streaming, DRM and other platform functionality.

One of the strong points about the Windows Media format is that it is the dominant format for webcasting. When it comes to live broadcasting, Windows Media is the format that is used hands-down. But this year, Adobe seems to be making progress in giving Windows Media a run for it's money. More and more I am hearing from customers who want to try out Flash for live broadcasting and content delivery networks are actively working to build out their networks to support live Flash. Add that to the recent release by Adobe of their live Flash encoding tool, and the Adobe Flash format is quickly starting to pique webcasters interest. Yes, the quality of live Flash at high bitrates is still not as good as Windows Media and the Adobe live Flash Media Encoder is missing some features, but it's expected Adobe will work quickly on fixing those issues.

It's an exciting time in the industry as both Adobe and Microsoft are really stepping up to the plate this year with new announcements and product offerings for their video platforms. Later in the year, it’s going to shape up to be a real platform battle and round two is just getting underway.

Comments

[IPTV Evangelist]

Dan,

It will be interesting to see what strides Adobe makes specific to DRM since this is such an important issue. Be it it live or on-demand I think the business case will drive this on the ITV and IPTV side with many examples of companies that will not use Flash for this reason.

Also, is the Flash encoder capable of restricting "saved" downloads as it the case with WME?

[James Clarke]

Hey Dan. Can't wait to show you our new encoder :-)

[Christopher Levy]

As best anybody can tell Adobe is not doing anything to advance DRM in their ecosystem. Right now it's the number one reason the technology is limited to marketing purposes. On top of this, the inablity to download Flash movies without a seperate specific player to play them is a limiter.

IPTV Evangelist: I think you are referring to the WMENC's ability to support .DRM profiles for encrypting content both live and on-demand. This isn't inherent per se in the product. It does require an external DRM stack however.

[Stefan Richter]

If Adobe touches DRM then it will most likely be via a dedicated Player - or so I hope. In fact I wish they'd leave others to worry about technologies that are proven to have failed. Isn't it about time for a rethink of the current approaches to DRM? It inconveniences every single genuine customer and does little to prevent real piracy.
And by the way: Flash *streams* (as opposed to progressive downloads) aren't easily saved in the first place, at least I found it more challenging than saving WM streams for which there are many tools available.

[Flv Player]

Useful information, But ages since this post.