Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Sunday, April 15, 2007 at 9:00 PM PT

 

Adobe Showcases Media Player (with DRM)

Adobe will unveil Monday its business plan for a desktop Flash media player still in development. The product, due for beta release “this spring,” will be a free platform monetized through licensing DRM and analytics tools.

Adobe Media Player, which has been called “Philo” both internally and in early demos, looks like it could be an able competitor to internet TV efforts like Joost and video aggregation tools like Democracy. However, Adobe is not going that direction. The company is being careful not to set up its own proprietary platform, store, or even serial video index.

That’s because Adobe doesn’t want to cause conflicts with its partners and customers, said Craig Barberich, group product manager for Adobe Dynamic Media Organization, in a call last week. “The media companies have a lot of questions about the other technology providers – are they becoming media companies or becoming providers… We are not a media company,” he explained.

Adobe Media Player, in both Windows and Mac versions, will be distributed through Adobe’s own site as well as in branded form by media company customers. It is essentially a video RSS reader, with episodic content being brought in through feeds. Here’s a screenshot, including some sample content, though Adobe cautions that it is not yet ready to announce any partnerships.

Another business Adobe is not getting into is advertising, though the player will include tools for a wide variety of ad insertions, said Barberich: animation, pre-/post-mid-roll, overlay, and banner, all both offline and online. All content on the platform will be ad-supported; Adobe does not plan to include support for content sales, according to Barberich.

Through the player, Adobe will be launching its first effort at Flash DRM, something a third-party vendor, Widevine, had been the first to announce just last week. The timing suggests Widevine forced Adobe to show its hand, as one NTV commenter posits.

Barberich said Adobe’s DRM will come in two flavors: content integrity protection, where the company ensures advertising stays attached to content, and identity-based content protection, where the company disallows playing content outside of the computers on which it’s approved. Adobe will also sell a cookie-based reporting system for installation on customers’ servers.

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Comments & Trackbacks

  1. [...] NewTeeVee has the details. Also shipping on this is DRM. Partly so that folks like me can include advertising with videos and make sure that the advertising isn’t separated from the videos. Partly for media industry types to make sure that their content doesn’t get sprayed around the Internet. [...]

    Adobe announces new media player « Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger on April 15th, 2007 at 9:21 pm - Permalink

  2. [...] links: http://newteevee.com/2007/04/15/adobe-media-player/ [...]

    Adobe Media Player : standing on the shoulder of colossi on April 16th, 2007 at 1:52 am - Permalink

  3. [...] será lanzada en breve con herramientas de estadísticas y licencias DRM. Como se vé en NewTeeVee, las primeras capturas públicas de la tecnología lo hacen parecer un competir de servicios como [...]

    Microsoft Silverlight, la competencia de Adobe Flash on April 16th, 2007 at 2:17 am - Permalink

  4. [...] será lanzada en breve con herramientas de estadísticas y licencias DRM. Como se vé en NewTeeVee, las primeras capturas públicas de la tecnología lo hacen parecer un competir de servicios como [...]

    Noticias » Blog Archive » Microsoft Silverlight, la competencia de Adobe Flash on April 16th, 2007 at 2:23 am - Permalink

  5. [...] NewTeeVee has the details. Also shipping on this is DRM. Partly so that folks like me can include advertising with videos and make sure that the advertising isn’t separated from the videos. Partly for media industry types to make sure that their content doesn’t get sprayed around the Internet. [...]

    Beautyfil Mind » Blog Archive » Adobe announces new media player on April 16th, 2007 at 2:51 am - Permalink

  6. [...] to be outdone, Adobe has struck by previewing the Adobe Media Player, a standalone player that presumably may compete, some day, with the Microsoft [...]

    Silverlight vs. Flash: the battle for the platform -- Alec Saunders .LOG on April 16th, 2007 at 3:06 am - Permalink

  7. [...] (WPF/E) for the past 12 months. The announcement was such a success, it completely obliterated Adobe’s competing Flash-video announcement like Novell parts in a BlendTec blender. But it worries me that a lot of media publications and [...]

    Microsoft shines cool on WPF/E, turns on Silverlight - Long wins first prize for cheeky article titles - istartedsomething on April 16th, 2007 at 4:20 am - Permalink

  8. So is this the Widevine DRM inside?

    It sounds like the buisness meodel Widevine Presented last week expect Widevine supports all formats.

    FlashCTO on April 16th, 2007 at 7:51 am - Permalink

  9. It is funny

    Widvine is already showing this stuff with Flash 8 and 9 in thier booth Booth #C1855

    No new Adobe player needed …They demoed it for me last night

    FlashCTO on April 16th, 2007 at 7:56 am - Permalink

  10. [...] same thing with their media player, and they even plan on dipping their hands in some Flash DRM! As NewTeeVee points out this will essentially be a video RSS Reader that retrieves the video listings from feeds. Here is [...]

    Microsoft and Adobe Go Head-To-Head…Again - CyberNet News on April 16th, 2007 at 8:55 am - Permalink

  11. [...] seems akin to the publicity for pay-per-view boxing matches of yore. In this corner we have Adobe, who Sunday announced their own media platform and with the ubiquity of Flash is working with their new “Apollo” runtime and Flex to [...]

    NewTeeVee » Silverlight Comes To Light on April 16th, 2007 at 10:17 am - Permalink

  12. There is a web service that does this already called enScramble. Check it out at http://www.enscramble.com. It requires no additional client side code (uses Flash) or a new proprietary player (philo is yet another player download with no penetration or distribution in the market) The solution also does not require a poorly scaling, expensive streaming server either…

    Mark on April 16th, 2007 at 3:45 pm - Permalink

  13. [...] Read: ReadWriteWeb and NewTeeVee [...]

    Startup Meme » Adobe Launches Media Player to Feed Apollo Ecosystem on April 16th, 2007 at 6:26 pm - Permalink

  14. So I talked to Adobe yesterday…Their DRM is just SSL encryption between the FMS and the client with user and device authentication. It seems you must pay $4500 for a FMS (plus HW) and you do not get that many streams.

    They claimed their use of a non rtsp protocol keeps you from listening in…what a joke I can listen in on RTMP very easly

    This is certainly not a DRM…now move to ON2 and Widevine…that one appears to use industry standard DRM methods… It looks robust I saw it in booth #C1855…It is truely end to end and works with any server…Encryption, forensic watremarking and something they call “digital hole protection or DCP”. It seems this DCP protects shared memory and the bus stream recorders and screen recorders…The question remains is Widevine what Abobe is planning for their next DRM release?

    I asked Adobe booth folks that said that is what they thought but they were not sure.

    Widevine and ON2 would not disclose details regarding next efforts only that it works with Adobe Flash players 8, 9 and Flash Lite

    FlashCTO on April 17th, 2007 at 9:57 am - Permalink

  15. Thanks for the continued reporting, FlashCTO.

    Liz Gannes on April 17th, 2007 at 11:16 am - Permalink

  16. [...] será lanzada en breve con herramientas de estadísticas y licencias DRM. Como se vé en NewTeeVee, las primeras capturas públicas de la tecnología lo hacen parecer un competir de servicios como [...]

    I-Media Network :: Blog » Blog Archive » Microsoft Silverlight: la competencia de Adobe Flash on April 17th, 2007 at 5:41 pm - Permalink

  17. So, how does this effect GNU/Linux users?

    Jack on April 19th, 2007 at 11:36 am - Permalink

  18. [...] A odnośnie nowości jeszcze, Adobe Media Player http://newteevee.com/2007/04/15/adobe-media-player/ [...]

    Flash player 9 sobie radzi at mooska on April 21st, 2007 at 9:48 am - Permalink

  19. [...] en Newteevee aseguran que Adobe no entrará en el mercado de la publicidad, lo cierto es que su Adobe Media [...]

    Adobe Media Player, vídeos Flash en el escritorio « Cursos de Telesup on May 1st, 2007 at 7:06 am - Permalink

  20. [...] developers are used to Adobe’s media creation tools. Not to be outdone, Adobe introduced Adobe Media Player, a standalone media player that can play content "offline", as opposed to streamed [...]

    The Voip Blog » Blog Archive » Microsoft Silverlight takes on Adobe Flash on May 7th, 2007 at 3:24 pm - Permalink

  21. [...] NewTeeVee for more [...]

    Mac & Design » Blog Archive » Adobe Announces New Media Player on May 13th, 2007 at 7:20 pm - Permalink

  22. [...] Gannes of NewTeeVee has more info. The big news is that the Adobe Media Player supports DRM. I asked whether or not [...]

    » Adobe takes the wraps off of Philo, brands it Adobe Media Player | The Universal Desktop | ZDNet.com on May 22nd, 2007 at 3:50 pm - Permalink

  23. [...] and Legal TorrentsPrudeTube: Violence Up, Boobs DownAsterpix Says Forget Hypertext, Think HypervideoAdobe Showcases Media Player (with DRM)Access TorrentSpy Safely from the [...]

    Adobe Goes Deeper with Flash « NewTeeVee on September 6th, 2007 at 5:00 am - Permalink

  24. [...] due this quarter, according to an Adobe spokesperson I talked to recently) is to include DRM, as we reported last April. This is a play for the growing ad-supported streaming TV market. An outside vendor, [...]

    EFF Stirs Fear of Flash DRM « NewTeeVee on February 21st, 2008 at 2:16 pm - Permalink

  25. [...] also our initial coverage of AMP from last [...]

    Adobe to Bundle Media Player with Software Updates « NewTeeVee on March 17th, 2008 at 1:22 pm - Permalink

  26. [...] Launches Media Player Adobe today launches its Adobe Media Player, a product we’ve been following closely. AMP channels RSS feeds for streaming and download of online video from partners such as [...]

    Adobe Launches Media Player « NewTeeVee on April 9th, 2008 at 12:00 am - Permalink

  27. Interesting it seems that no one is actually using DRM on Flash video.

    check this tool out for recording TV and Movies free of advertising and free of charge. http://www.huluadfree.com

    in addtion to Hulu it works on Fancast, NBC.com, theWB.com, and on Amazon

    Ross Morlley on September 25th, 2008 at 4:31 pm - Permalink

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