Adobe Continues March Onto Your TV

Adobe and Broadcom Corporation announced today that Flash will be integrated into Broadcom’s latest digital television and set-top box system-on-a-chip platforms. The partnership will make it easier to watch web video on your TV, and comes one day after Adobe announced a similar chip partnership with Intel.

Why the sudden push into chips? Stacey over at GigaOM does a god job of explaining:

Software companies have to port their programs to a variety of processors to keep up with the expansion of heterogeneous computing. Witness Adobe’s efforts to get Flash released on PCs (x 86 chips) and mobiles (ARM architecture) at the same time. And Adobe has to address embedded efforts too, especially since electronics makers want to turn the TV into a web-connected device.

Flash is the dominant video platform on the web, and Adobe wants to keep it that way as more televisions start receiving online video. ABI Research predicts that, thanks to more Net-connected TVs, the number of people watching online video will boom to 941 million in 2013, up from 563 million at the end of 2008. Getting in on the chip level with biggies like Intel and Broadcom is one tactic to ensure Flash’s dominance.

Broadcom’s Flash-supporting chips are expected to be available to manufacturers in the first half of this year.

Update: And the chips just keep comin’. Sigma Designs announced that it will be integrating Flash into Sigma’s system-on-a-chip products for digital televisions, set-top boxes and other devices.