I am sure several of you saw a notice pop-up on your PC in the morning about the latest Flash update from Adobe ….. Yes, that’s right- Flash player 10.1 is now officially available. Adobe Flash player team’s blog lists all the enhancements in fairly detail. A look at comments also gives you a glimpse into joy and grievances of public. The thing about Flash is that it is so powerful that no matter how many enhancements you make to it, there will always be something else to do. Adobe’s team does deserve a big round of applause for releasing FP10.1 on schedule. ......continue reading

Adobe does a great job of maintaining a list of Flash enabled mobile/wireless devices, but there isn’t any such list for consumer devices. Originally I started keeping track of CE devices with Flash for my other blog flashliteonline.com where I was hoping to write about Flash Lite applications. But the CE market has been slow to evolve so there has been little to report on Flash Lite applications on such devices. With the addition of Flash Lite for Digital Home, I am hopeful that new devices will start emerging soon and I think this blog is a good place to maintain such list. The list is available on ‘Flash Enabled CE devices‘ page. If you know of any other devices that should be on the list, please comment or drop me a line at anand at joshimail dot net. I will update the list from time to time. ......continue reading

Flash Lite 3 for digital home, is now available for TI platform. The port is optimized for h.264 video and AAC audio using TI Codec engine. This allows you to play Flash video in 30 fps at D1 resolution. The port allows for streaming content using HTTP and RTMP protocols.   We have kept the design modular so that the customers can potentially get the development kits from us and integrate their own libraries if they choose to.The port is tested on TI DaVinci DM 6446 processor and runs on Linux. Of course the port is done on Linux framebuffer as most of the embedded devices require a thin blitting layer. Please email me at anand at joshimail dot net for additional information. ......continue reading

Flash Lite 3 running on Marvell Inc. Kirkwood platform is now available. Marvell as you know, acquired XScale line of processors from Intel a while ago, and Kirkwood SoC has a 1.2 GHz XScale core.  (Xscale is basically ARM9 capable of ARM V5 instruction set.) Target market for Kirkwood is Set-top boxes, home gateway, home media servers, point of sale computers and plug-computers. ......continue reading

Here’s a video of Flash Lite 3.1 running on Intel CE3100 platform that was demoed at IDF (Intel Developer’s Forum). The demo showed an accelerated FL3.1 capable of playing 1080P HD h.264 content via a UI designed using Flash Lite. Let me know if you are interested in any additional information. ......continue reading

Some of you have must have seen the documents published by Adobe on devnet that talk about several details of the Flash Lite digital home platform. One of the powerful features of the Flash Lite for digital home is the ability to be able to extend Actionscript. You can create your own Actionscript commands, define them and implement corresponding logic in Flash Lite code. For example, you can have a command to change volume of TV, or channel or fetch updated data for an ad- etc. etc. This is a very powerful feature and is available for Flash Lite on digital home devices. ......continue reading

MIPS has joined the ever increasing list of chipsets supporting Android. MIPS makes CPU architectures and licenses it to different silicon vendors. Whereas ARM is strong in cellular and mobile market, MIPS is strong in digital home market. So this would mean that Android is starting to make its way into verticals outside of mobile. RMI, a licensee of MIPS is already demoing the Android port on its chipsets. ......continue reading

Calsoftlabs, Intel and Adobe have been working on putting together an evaluation port for customers looking to develop devices using Intel’s Canmore. Intel Canmore, a media processor chip, also known as CE3100 is X86 based SoC. The chip is targeted towards consumer electronics products such as digital TV, set-top box, blue ray DVD and IPTV. The media processor combines leading-edge CE features for high-definition video support, home-theater quality audio and advanced 3-D graphics, with and offers performance, flexibility and compatibility of IA-based hardware and software. ......continue reading

Calsoft Labs, an Adobe Flash Lite distributor has ported Flash Lite 3.1 to Analog Devices’s Blackfin processor. The Blackfin processor is a DSP chip targette towards the consumer and mobile market. The port is available for the BF 548 chip and runs on uCLinux OS. The port supports all the standard Flash Lite features, and runs on the reference board provided by Analog Devices. ......continue reading

At CES, Sigma Design announced support for Flash Lite on Sigma Design chipset. Sigma chipsets are popular in set-top-box market and are also used in IPTV and DTVs. So with this, Flash Lite is officially supported on Broadcom, intel and Sigma Design. Intel is the upcoming player, but Broadcom and Sigma are dominant in the existing digital home market. ......continue reading

Well- Flash Lite is coming to Broadcom chips also. Broadcom and Adobe Systems have announced that they will work together to integrate Adobe’s Flash Lite into Broadcom’s latest digital television and set-top box system-on-a-chip platforms. Adobe Flash Lite 3 software will be supported in Broadcom’s BCM3549, BCM3556, BCM7400 and BCM7405 system-on-a-chip solutions. The Flash-enabled products are expected to be available to manufacturers in the first half of 2009. ......continue reading

Adobe and Intel’s press release today says that they are working on a Flash port for Intel’s latest Camore platform. The CE3100 platform is a X86 based SoC targetted towards consumer market. More specifically the chip targets Set-top box, digital TV, blue ray DVD and retail connected A/V devices. The chip offers high definition decoder to facilitate decoding. With this port, the OEMs will be able to purchase Flash Lite 3 running on Intel platform. ......continue reading

Intel has made several announcements at IDF that promise to take X86 architecture into a host of new markets. We all know that Intel has already announced (and is shipping) UMPCs based on Atom processor. Atom is a low end X86 processor that is lot cheaper than Celeron, and of course consumes lot less power. So it is ideal for a Nokia N800 class devices and other MIDs. ......continue reading

According to the data collected by Consumer Electronics Association, the CE revenue will grow by 10% this year to $700 billion. Some of the segments such as TV are expected to show 20% growth. I don’t see any reason why this will market will ever stop to grow till no more CE devices can be invented. CE devices have become toys and we are slowly being brainwashed into having a new device every few years. In fact they are not even designed to last more than a few years. Do you think your iPod is rugged enough to last 10-15 years? How many of you have used your cell phone last for 5 years? ......continue reading

Flash 7 port running on directfb/gtk Linux is now available to OEM licensees. Directfb is popular in Set Top Boxes running Linux and is a much powerful layer than Linux framebuffer. Why would anyone still want Flash 7? Well ......continue reading