Virgin Media Player - why on earth Flash?

Originally Posted by DaBoz

Maybe you have poor near vision or are spoiled with massive TV. I sit 10 feet from my 32" WS TV. We hold our phones approx 2ft from our faces. Guess what, the screens are the same relative size. Relatively speaking, an iPhone 4's retina display is higher res at that distance.

Size isn't everything. Holding something 2ft from your face is not the same as watching something that's 10ft away, regardless of relative size. The viewing angle is almost certainly different (i.e. you're more likely to be looking down rather than ahead), which can result in neck strain or discomfort for many people over prolonged periods. Similarly, focusing your eyes on something 2ft away means more exertion for your eye muscles, especially as almost everything else in your field of view is further away, forcing your eyes to work harder to re-focus should you glance away from the screen even for a moment.

[peterjcat]

Without getting too much into the politics of it all: the installed base of mobile devices that can play Flash video is tiny compared to the number that can play other kinds of video but not Flash. This may well change in the future, but for now it would seem that to insist on Flash is to severely limit your potential audience.

Flash is (arguably) useful for its DRM capabilities, but the same thing can be achieved by using mobile apps instead of webpages -- Hulu Plus and Netflix seem happy enough to provide streaming to mobile devices through apps, and I haven't heard of their streams being compromised. And Flash can of course contain the same video and audio codecs that are common to all devices (notably H.264), so there's no need to encode separate streams for each platform -- it's just a question of packaging the streams in suitable containers, which is relatively straightforward.

Obviously a lot of content isn't licensed for mobile devices, but where it is, a relatively platform-neutral approach is surely the way to go -- rather than one that ignores what, for whatever reason, is right now by far the largest audience.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by peterjcat

Flash is (arguably) useful for its DRM capabilities, but the same thing can be achieved by using mobile apps instead of webpages -- Hulu Plus and Netflix seem happy enough to provide streaming to mobile devices through apps, and I haven't heard of their streams being compromised. And Flash can of course contain the same video and audio codecs that are common to all devices (notably H.264), so there's no need to encode separate streams for each platform -- it's just a question of packaging the streams in suitable containers, which is relatively straightforward.

Actually, even when devices can use the same codec and container, there is still a need to produce multiple streams. This is because when you have two devices, both using the same codec and container, they may not have the same display resolution. So, what do you do? Encode a video at the lowest resolution, and hope it doesn't look too bad on the higher res screen, or encode it at the highest resolution. This, of course is assuming that the device with the lower res screen is capable of shrinking the video. That's totally ignoring the fact that any device that does that is going to drain a lot of battery power, and users aren't going to carry on using a service that kills their device batteries.

The BBC do use different streams for different resolutions, and indeed, have a huge render farm devoted to producing them.

As for why virgin use flash, do they have a dedicated mobile service yet? If they don't, it makes more sense for them to use flash simply because 98% of computers have Flash Player installed, or are capable of having it installed

It's also worth remembering that we are currently on the third major version of iPlayer. Version 1 (which the BBC seem to be trying the forget) used Windows Media files and DRM, but did not support mobile devices. Version 2 used Flash, and did not initially support any mobile devices. Then the BBC introduced the iPhone version and mobile support after V2 had been in use a couple of months. V3 (the Web 2.0 enabled version we have now) has always supported mobile clients.

As for writing your own Apps, well, the difficulty there (for the iPhone at least) is that Apple tend not to allow apps that duplicate the functionality of the iPhone's inbuilt software, and that includes DRM. And Apple aren't going to let anyone use their DRM. As the BBC have apparently found it.

[roger skillin]

Originally Posted by DaBoz

To exclude the iPhone market seems bonkers,

Bonkers.

For apple to exclude Flash is even more bonkers, think about that

[peterjcat]

Originally Posted by Stuart

Actually, even when devices can use the same codec and container, there is still a need to produce multiple streams.

Yes, that's very true -- there is a question about what resolutions to support in addition to what codecs/containers to support. My point was only that supporting a number of containers shouldn't require additional rendering above what is already needed for multiple resolutions.

As for why virgin use flash, do they have a dedicated mobile service yet? If they don't, it makes more sense for them to use flash simply because 98% of computers have Flash Player installed, or are capable of having it installed

It's hard to call it a "dedicated" mobile service but they are offering a separate mobile webpage that's only accessible from certain handsets (with a free hour per day for Virgin Mobile customers!). Totally understand using Flash for computers but as the mobile service ramps up for real I'd hope it would be available on the kind of phones people actually have

As for writing your own Apps, well, the difficulty there (for the iPhone at least) is that Apple tend not to allow apps that duplicate the functionality of the iPhone's inbuilt software, and that includes DRM. And Apple aren't going to let anyone use their DRM. As the BBC have apparently found it.

Apple's App Store policy is certainly capricious and hard to predict, and I agree that they're not going to license their DRM to anyone else, but I think that scenario is a pretty broad interpretation of the "no duplicate functionality" guideline. The dedicated apps written by Hulu and Netflix seem to be secure enough for their rightsholders and had no trouble getting approval, so at least there's a precedent there.

---------- Post added at 15:03 ---------- Previous post was at 14:58 ----------

Originally Posted by roger skillin

For apple to exclude Flash is even more bonkers, think about that

It wasn't bonkers; whatever you might think of it, it was a calculated decision, and while it's too early to say that it's worked (Flash alternatives aren't always available), it hasn't failed yet either (Flash alternatives are often available, and people are still buying Apple gadgets as fast as they can make 'em).