Today we announced the Flash Platform for the Digital Home one of the most exciting products I think we’ve produced in the devices space.  We’ve been working on this flat out for many many months, and finally all this hard work has resulted in an incredible new product.

It should be no surprise that the Digital Home player is built on Flash Lite 3.1 (same as the Distributable Player).  Though of course the major challenge has been to create a player that can survive on a set-top box.  Think about it, an average set-top box or TV sits in the home for about 5-7 years, these devices are rarely turned off and they are expected to consume little power.  Although to be fair, many are very bad at saving power in the off state including my box.

I remember sitting in an engineering training session (a year ago) watching a Flash Lite game playing on a television.  The team informed us that the challenge ahread was similar to plugging an HD TV into a mobile phone and attempting to go on youtube.  Think about it, a 300mhz CPU playing 1080p H.264 video; it just shouldn’t be possible.. but with the magic of Flash Lite and very clever engineers, it is

The results have been incredible and it’s pretty clear now that there’s a real opportunity to bring the web to your TV.  As usual we haven’t done this alone, we’re working with partners across the industry including Broadcom, Intel, Comcast, Disney Interactive, Netflix, New York Times Company, NXP Semiconductors, Sigma Designs, STMicroelectronics, Atlantic Records.  Of course there are others, but that would be telling

But these days we’re all about “multi-screen” so let us consider that for a moment.  Just think of all those users sitting in front of their TVs every night, and every single one of them fiddling with their mobile phone.  You see, interactive TV may have been around for some time but this changes the market and opens up a huge opportunity.

To give you an idea of what has been considered here at Adobe, enjoy!