Adobe Builds Support for its Media Player

Adobe this morning is building support for its multilingual AIR Web services platform (formerly code-named Apollo) by unveiling a new version of its service-driven Adobe Media Player (AMP) for deployment by some major players, including CBS, Yahoo, and PBS.

"We think that Adobe Media Player is the next generation of media player because it doesn't just play files, and it isn't just a closed, walled garden of content," remarked Deeje Cooley, AMP's product manager, in an interview with BetaNews. "We are really trying to embrace the ecosystem and the open standards that are emerging out on the Internet, such as RSS. By leveraging RSS, we're able to support a wide ranging and ever growing body of video podcast content, so anybody can publish a video podcast and will now be able to make that content available in Adobe Media Player."

Adobe's plan for AMP is to achieve parity with Windows Media Player, Real Player, and Apple QuickTime without having to build a stand-alone set of binaries, especially for multiple computer platforms. Instead, it's banking on AJAX as a layout technologyand Flash - which it now, of course, owns - as a means of delivery and display.

Then the company hopes it can step back from the spotlight a bit and let its partners have more of the stage, which now include two major US television networks, Yahoo, and video podcasting service provider Blip.TV. Letting partners' brands play a larger role in their own media presentation is part of Adobe's formula for fast-tracking AMP toward that equal playing field.

But there's another reason for giving partners more control over the program, having to do with opening up a revenue stream.

As Cooley describes it, AMP plans to "provide a number of features built into the player to really support the business of content - specifically: free, ad-supported, downloadable content...We have a number of options built into the system to allow publishers to either do what we call we call 'just-in-time' advertising, or cache advertising, or a combination of both."

[portfolio_slideshow id=28215]The objective is to let publishers provide commercial-supported programs that are free to the user, but by opening up the support model. In the "just-in-time" scenario, a viewer could conceivably "own" a video, complete with its commercial breaks.

But each time the viewer sees that show, the publisher of that show can update the ads. The "cache" alternative is more conventional, but in some cases the publisher may prefer the viewer to be able to see the same ad more than once - it could mean multiple impressions.

"We think the benefit to end users is, they don't have to worry about being online or offline," Cooley continued, "to watch this great content...Ultimately you could be watching an episode on Friday, and the ads could be for a big football game over the weekend. You could be watching that same episode again the following Tuesday, and the ads will have been refreshed to be more timely."

Ensuring that these ads are updated while the viewer is offline seems tricky, but AMP accomplishes this the same way you keep up on the latest news headlines for yourself: using RSS.

"Underneath the hood, Adobe Media Player is basically a video RSS aggregator, so we've masked all of the underlying technology and terms from the user interface, but when the user adds a favorite show to AMP, it continually checks that RSS feed for new updates, new episodes, and attempts to download them."

Thus RSS will be keeping all content fresh on the viewer's system, including both his favorite programs and the inserts they may contain.

Publishers will be given more abundant controls over the content that viewers have already downloaded, Cooley told us, including its time of expiration.

"Our vision is that, because it's free and it's ad-supported, we think publishers are going to recognize that, rather than expiring that content, it might actually be more interesting to allow that user to keep that episode, because every time they launch it, those publishers will be able to refresh the advertising and generate more impressions for their advertising partner. We think long-term, it will be an interesting benefit to allow this content to be playable at any time."

There will be "content protection mechanisms" in place, but Adobe is being very careful about how they present this concept to the public, especially with its dangerous phraseology. Publishers will have the option of authenticating users or authenticating themselves, for what Adobe is calling a "content integrity" provision. Here, publishers sign and encrypt shows so that any user can still see them -- probably using a public key for decryption -- though users can't change the content.

Most importantly, they can't remove the ads. Alternately, publishers can employ "user-assignable protection," though viewers will need to check back into the service and re-authenticate to replay "owned" content.

Making all of this possible is an update to the AIR platform, which was just made available through Adobe Labs this morning.