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If there’s one web video platform that’s nearly impossible to escape from, it has to be Adobe’s Flash.  YouTube, Vimeo, Hulu, and nearly every other video hosting website uses Flash as a means of showing video.  According to Adobe, Flash is currently installed on 98 percent of all computers.  Apparently that number isn’t good enough for Adobe, they want us to use Flash everywhere.

How can Adobe expand the penetration of Flash if its already on 98 percent of computers?  By putting Flash on other devices like TVs and set-top boxes.  The move will be announced today at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, and Flash equipped TVs could come around by the end of the year.  Flash could easily bring Internet services such as YouTube and Hulu to our TVs, or any other number of web services.  It would allow for any number of applications that could make a TV screen useful for more than just watching whatever show is on, or what DVD/Blu-Ray/DVR content you’re watching.

The biggest complaint anybody has about Flash tends to be the fact that it’s so taxing on the system.  Running Flash takes a lot of processing power, and a lot of battery power in notebooks and cell phones, which is why Steve Jobs never wanted it on the iPhone.  How this will affect the TVs is unknown at the moment, but it wouldn’t be all that surprising if some issues of sluggishness pop up when using Flash.  But, with Flash being the most dominant video format on the web, its doubtful if many will care, as long as they can use it to watch YouTube and Hulu in grainy-vision on new HDTVs.

Read [NY Times]