Flash on TVs, Set-Top Boxes and Blu-Ray Players

Posted by Serge Jespers on Apr 20, 2009 in devices, Flash Platform, open screen project | 2 comments

If you switch on your satellite or cable box today, chances are you are not very impressed with the user experience. I know I’m not. Even though these boxes are connected to the Internet, they often don’t use it to its full potential.

When I browse through the on demand library on my cable provider’s (Telenet in Belgium) set-top box, the only info I get is a short description. I’m lucky if it even shows the movie poster or a list of actors. Even more lucky if they have a trailer available. Those are just my minimum requirements. ;-) What I really want to see is recommendations from my friends on Twitter or Facebook. Reviews from IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes. Trailers or clips from YouTube. All this information is out there and no one seems to be using it on these devices. Why? Good question… Before I joined Adobe, I worked for a large Belgian media company. My last year there (is that really already 5 years ago?), I investigated the digital TV platform (MHP) the cable provider set out to use. So I do know quite a bit about this technology. Sadly, I also found that this platform and many other like it have a very limited graphical and functional feature set. Programming for these platforms is definitely not as straightforward as it should be. In this world, there are no APIs to talk to Facebook or YouTube so you basically have nothing to start from… and it shows…

Now what if TVs and set-top boxes would have a Flash player on board? That would certainly make this a whole lot easier! That is exactly what Adobe is announcing today. We’re also showing a demo on a set-top box at NAB in Las Vegas this week.

This may sound a little bit strange, but this is exactly what I’ve been dreaming about for a long long time and I hope that cable/satellite providers everywhere will soon start building their UIs and apps on set-top boxes and TVs that support it. I’d love to see them use the full potential of the Flash Platform and the information available on the Internet. Are you listening, Telenet? ;-)