Adobe Media Player (AMP 1.0) launched by Adobe, allows streaming of video and downloading from their partners. It is the latest player to enter the online video space, which offers great software that not only rivals Windows Media Player, but also provides a wide variety of video content, including music videos. Adobe announced this move about a year ago.
Adobe has gone into partnership with major content publishers and broadcasters, such as MyToons, Comedy Central, Blip.tv, MTV, Universal Music Group, Style.com, PBS, CBS and a few others, to provide video material. With so many top media companies and networks in its groove, Adobe aims at providing wholesome entertainment in the form of reality TV shows, sports, educational videos, classic feature films amongst others.
CBS is providing its CSI shows and lots of archived videos. MTV is showing “The Hills.” The others also have some good stuff for viewing. Adobe said that since it has just started, more content will be coming soon from the other broadcasters.
Just as it is with the other Adobe products, installation of the Adobe Media Player is easy, especially if one is used to running an AIR application.
With the AMP, all the entertainment is available offline too, which means the videos can either be streamed from the partner’s website or downloaded, depending on what the producer of the content allows. The content producer has total control over that and there are easy to understand icons, letting you know what you can do with the content you are watching.
There is also the option of subscribing to the favorite shows, with reminders letting the user know when the shows are available. These shows can also be downloaded automatically, to be viewed at the convenience of the user. A personal library can be set up by sorting in order of preference. The AMP can also load and perform FLVs, including long-format FLVs.
What does all this entertainment cost? Adobe Media Player is being offered to its users free of charge, although, there will be advertising attached to the videos. The price of the video content downloading software is not yet known.
The ammunition available with AMP is exciting to say the least. There will be a content catalogue providing information on new TV shows on the internet as well as video podcasts from other media companies. Adobe TV is one of the channels available in the Adobe catalogue.
AMP also lets users keep track of their personal videos that they have created. The video content on their systems can be managed using AMP.
Ashley Still, a senior product manager at Adobe says that they may at a later time; introduce different business models, such as renting videos or paying for downloading a video. He also said that in spite of there being several other media players like iTunes, Adobe thinks that having its own media player will be important for various reasons. Adobe also assures its users that they aim at providing a very high quality product.
Adobe will earn revenue from the advertising and will be sharing this with its partners. It is trying to increase the revenue from the services online. Advertisers will be able to target their advertising based on a per show basis or even by episodes and may have the flexibility to place their ads wherever they like. There are certain to be a lot of big companies interested in advertising with Adobe, considering its popularity.
The good news is that Adobe Media Player, which is based on Adobe’s Flash technology, is cross platform compatible and is available for both windows and MAC users.
With Adobe entering the media player market, entertainment is taken to a new level, which all users can enjoy free of cost, at least for now.
