Adobe Media Player and Adobe TV

Adobe Labs has just released a new competing media player for online and offline videos. Adobe Media Player 1.0 is being positioned as a direct competitor to MS Windows Media Player, Apple iTunes and RealNetworks’ RealPlayer. Will it make a dent in the already saturated media player market?

The application is very lean at 1.4 MB (download here) and was built on Adobe Air. It can play streamed or downloaded FLV or MPEG-4 videos.

However, it’s interesting to note the hardware requirements it posted on the site:

Windows
* Intel® Pentium® 4 2.33GHz or faster processor
* Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista® Home, Business, or Ultimate
* 1GB of RAM and 64MB of VRAM

Mac OS (PowerPC)
* PowerPC® G5 1.8GHz or faster processor
* Mac OS X v10.4.9–10.4.11 or 10.5.1–10.5.2
* 1GB of RAM and 64MB of VRAM

Mac OS (Intel)
* Intel Coreâ„¢ Duo 1.33GHz or faster processor
* Mac OS X v10.4.9–10.4.11 or 10.5.1–10.5.2
* 1GB of RAM and 64MB of VRAM

Pretty high requirements, huh? The Adobe Media player has the same clean, sleek interface as the Adobe Photo Express we covered a few weeks back. Pretty nice but was disappointed that I cannot just drag and drop video files into the player. The supported FLV (Spark or VP6 codec) or MPEG-4 (H.264 codec) formats are also limited.

In a sense, Adobe MP is more like competing with Apple iTunes. All they need to do is gather up more and more content. Current content partners include MTV, Nicolodeon, PBS, CBS, Comedy Central, Universal Music Group and Blip.tv among others. You can subscribe to vidcasts but you’ll need the FLV, MPEG-4 feeds to play them.

On the other hand, Adobe TV is an online video channel offering expert instruction and inspiration about Adobe products via informative and entertaining videos. Show are very educational and are targeted to specific professional groups photographers, designers, videographers and developers. Very useful to those who are Adobe product enthusiasts.