At Intel’s Developer Forum Engadget recorded a demo of an Intel (an Open Screen Project partner) based set-top box running a Flash based user interface and Flash based applications. The heart of this set-top box is Intel’s CE 3100 Media Processor which according to Engadget “combines an 800MHz Pentium M core with a proprietary video processing core all on one chip. That’s about as much power as a 1.2GHz Atom…“.

The video demonstrates the Flash UI on top of a Linux operating system. It shows how you can add Flash based applications on top of a video signal coming from the tuner and run full screen Flash based applications. The future is bright for the Flash Platform! Flash on!

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? ;-)

One of my predictions for 2009 is that we’ll finally see the convergence of desktop, mobile and devices. Back in May we announced the Open Screen Project in which Adobe partners up with (currently) 20 hardware manufacturers, content providers, networks, … to bring Flash and AIR everywhere.

Yesterday, Intel announced that it has ported and optimized the Flash player for its Media Processor CE 3100. Today, Broadcom joins the party by announcing that it is also adding the Flash player to its system-on-a-chip (SoC) platform.

These new chips are built to deliver rich Web content and Flash based applications to Blu-ray players, set-top boxes or even directly to TVs and thus eliminating the set-top box.

Both partners are expected to ship the platforms as early as the first half of this year but if you happen to be in Las Vegas this week for CES, make sure you stop by their booths. Both Intel and Broadcom are demoing their new chips this week!