Adobe Releasing Beta Flash 9 Player Today, “Moviestar”

According to blogs around the web, Adobe today will be releasing an updated beta version of it’s Flash Player 9 software, code-named Moviestar. This update will add H.264 support, a now-common standard. Interestingly enough, the new player will also be able to take advantage of the users’ graphics cards acceleration and is optimized for Dual-Core processors.

The reason this should be of any interest to anyone is that the addition of H.264 support means that high-definition video should be popping up around the web in the months to come. Of course, we won’t likely see it spread around too fast, considering that current standard-definition content is a major bandwidth hog as is. So more than likely, this will be executed in business scenarios more often than on sites like YouTube, at least at first. Either way, I am looking forward to watching some high-definition content instead of having to stare at a 300×250 box.

Support for the H.264 standard will lead to more Web video content being available in high definition, Randall said. He said Adobe chose to support the standard now because it is being adopted more by content producers and media distributors like cable companies. Flash is a de facto standard for streaming video used by YouTube and other high-volume Web sites.

Source: News.com