Hulu Developing Non-Flash Player for Deployment on iPad?

[mtnDewFTW]

Oh I really hope they bring it to the iPad.
I don't think they'll ever be a App in the App Store, just because it's very unlikely that Hulu will make one, and it's even more unlikely that Apple would approve it, but I'm really looking forward to this.

 

[DoNoHarm]

I find it interesting that macrumors posted this story next to the apple tv one. This hulu story is OLD. You can see stories 2 years old claiming that hulu is working on an iPhone app. Total bs.

 

[techfreak85]

Great. If this happens, I will most likely but an iPad then.

 

[whatever]

I bet my first iPad that it won't be available in Canada.

It should work in the entire United States, including Canada....<grin>

 

[whatever]

Open Rambling Letter To Steve. (Seems to be the thing to do these days)

Apple does not want flash so you have to buy games. And that's all it is isn't it Steve....

As a flash designer from way back, it may be buggy but is so prolific that it's like releasing a browser and saying, "Sorry it's not going to support JPEG as PNG is better."

Flash is the best solution for
Multi Layered interactive video
3D Animation
Easy timeline based animation
Very Complex animation!

But the point is you have said that the iPhone (and iPad) gives the best browsing experience available - but what's the point if you can't actually see any interesting sites! Content comes in different ways and I for one like usable news / social sites but I love Rich media sites, interactive multimedia sites.

Not one of these works properly on the iphone...
www.disney.com (!)
www.tokyoplastic.com
www.nike.com
www.adidas.com
www.philips.co.uk
www.sony.com/index.php
www.bbc.com
www.facebook.com - no the app doesn't count.
www.myspace.com
www.prowl.co.uk (ours - slipped that in!)
www.vimeo.com
www.snow.com
All these....http://www.papervisionshowcase.com/
the utterly awesome site http://www.cinema.philips.com/?ls=gb_en
http://www.snow.com/

Blue boxes everywhere!

The web is not all play through videos - it's interaction and what annoys me the most is that the iPad would be an awesome interface for flash.

I'd like to see any of these done in HTML5 - certainly in the time it took me to make mine! The fact it that there are some HTML5 code that would take 100 lines of code and in flash maybe 2 lines... it's a huge step back.

http://html5gallery.com/ - Oh look it's 1997 again - and anything interesting on there… guess what… all done with flash!

If apple is so narked with it being buggy - grow up and sort it out. Seriously it was on the back of adobe and macromedia that People even started using Mac's ( Photohop / Illustrator for DTP ) I've spent my career learning it and making money form it and now Steve are dead set on killing it. And what do we all still buy… Apple!

But to be honest - this is all one step to far. Android for my next phone. A win 7 tablet - just but I'll still keep the macbook… It not apple love or hate thing, steve… the macbook is awesome bit of kit… but then again I can still play flash on that!

If you are so narked with it, Apple has $40Billion(!) in the bank, invest in Adobe and fix it Steve, Don't try and put all us designers out of work.

Andy

Andy,
As a successful Flash developer myself (I measure my success has someone who made quite a bit of money working in Flash), I have to disagree with you.

The quality of Flash (both the user environment and the plugin) has gone done hill dramatically.

I'm not going to blame Adobe, because the last good release that Macromedia had was Flash 5 (or as l like to remember is as the last version that came with a manual!).

I bought my first Mac, because of Flash. Writing code and designing in Flash on Mac was a joy, but with each release it just go worst and worst. A project that I published on one version of Flash would take a minute and on the next version of Flash it would take several minutes. I would add more memory and upgrade my machines and still when I published in Flash my CPUs would max out. Should a Final Cut Pro video actually use less CPU than Flash does when it's doing a simple publish? I know I'm comparing Apples to Oranges here, but seriously!

I ran out and bought CS 3 when it came out hoping that it would be better and it's not. The fact that it's not 64-Bit was forgivable, but what about CS 4.

Andy, what I find so weird about your rant is your unwillingness to learn some new technology and make some money.

You should really try to open your mind to new things and new opportunities
And I'm not just being an Apple fanboy here, look at Android look at other development platforms, branch out and have fun or run the risk of becoming a dinosaur.

I have all but stopped developing in Flash. Developing using Apple's SDKs is so much better, fun and profitable.

 

[deenybird]

While I agree this is good, it also has a downside.
I don't want steve to think that his power play to force out his competitors and redefine an industry is working. No man should have that much power, not even steve.

 

[appleseed76]

Anybody stop to think what Hulu on the iPad will do? It'll cannabilize iTunes video sales. No way is Apple going to allow this.

You probably right, but for some reason I don't think Apple cares. They're trying to drip the price of TV shows to a dollar, or offer a streaming service, but it's slow going. I think they should focus more on movie rental and purchase, games, apps, and books, particularly textbooks. Most people don't watch TV shows over and over the same way they watch movies. At least I don't. TV shows are disposable entertainment and if you already have cable why would you want to pay to have the content on your mobile device when you can just DVR it.

 

[doug in albq]

Open Rambling Letter To Steve. (Seems to be the thing to do these days)

Apple does not want flash so you have to buy games. And that's all it is isn't it Steve....

As a flash designer from way back, it may be buggy but is so prolific that it's like releasing a browser and saying, "Sorry it's not going to support JPEG as PNG is better."

Flash is the best solution for
Multi Layered interactive video
3D Animation
Easy timeline based animation
Very Complex animation!

But the point is you have said that the iPhone (and iPad) gives the best browsing experience available - but what's the point if you can't actually see any interesting sites! Content comes in different ways and I for one like usable news / social sites but I love Rich media sites, interactive multimedia sites.

Not one of these works properly on the iphone...
www.disney.com (!)
www.tokyoplastic.com
www.nike.com
www.adidas.com
www.philips.co.uk
www.sony.com/index.php
www.bbc.com
www.facebook.com - no the app doesn't count.
www.myspace.com
www.prowl.co.uk (ours - slipped that in!)
www.vimeo.com
www.snow.com
All these....http://www.papervisionshowcase.com/
the utterly awesome site http://www.cinema.philips.com/?ls=gb_en
http://www.snow.com/

Blue boxes everywhere!

The web is not all play through videos - it's interaction and what annoys me the most is that the iPad would be an awesome interface for flash.

I'd like to see any of these done in HTML5 - certainly in the time it took me to make mine! The fact it that there are some HTML5 code that would take 100 lines of code and in flash maybe 2 lines... it's a huge step back.

http://html5gallery.com/ - Oh look it's 1997 again - and anything interesting on there… guess what… all done with flash!

If apple is so narked with it being buggy - grow up and sort it out. Seriously it was on the back of adobe and macromedia that People even started using Mac's ( Photohop / Illustrator for DTP ) I've spent my career learning it and making money form it and now Steve are dead set on killing it. And what do we all still buy… Apple!

But to be honest - this is all one step to far. Android for my next phone. A win 7 tablet - just but I'll still keep the macbook… It not apple love or hate thing, steve… the macbook is awesome bit of kit… but then again I can still play flash on that!

If you are so narked with it, Apple has $40Billion(!) in the bank, invest in Adobe and fix it Steve, Don't try and put all us designers out of work.

Andy

thank you for adding some sensible discourse to this one-sided discussion.

other sites that require flash, off the top of my head, include:

espn.com
ebay.com
usps.com
fedx.com
ups.com
weather.com

...just a few small companies you might have heard of....

also, Adobe is right-now developing a great, new, easy-to-use development app for Flash/Air called "Flash Catalyst" which can be DL'ed for no cost from Adobe Labs.

Listen, I hate all-flash websites with their mystery-meat navigation and quirky sounds, and the loading-bar....But, small Flash elements (Re.: small animation elements) can have their place on even refined, reserved, commercial/commerce-based websites (see the list above).

What exactly are the development apps to make interactive animation with html5...?

 

[techfreak85]

Anybody stop to think what Hulu on the iPad will do? It'll cannabilize iTunes video sales. No way is Apple going to allow this.

Unfortunately, you are probably right. Unless they feel that Hulu will be a big selling point for the iPad, which it would be for me. Ultimately, Apple wants to sell iPads, not TV shows.

 

[CFreymarc]

A story too similar

. . . but Adobe told us that the iPad would be useless without Flash! Could it be . . . could it possibly be that perhaps Adobe had an ulterior motive for saying that? No, no -- I couldn't be that cynical.

Seriously, though, it just goes to show you: success breeds success. Hulu, just like every other developer, smells money in the iPad, and they don't want to be left behind. Any video site that cares about income from mobile devices will have a non-Flash alternative up and running ASAP.

As a video player, Flash is soon to be ancient history. And good riddance.

A long, long, time ago, in an industrial park far, far away from downtown San Jose, (the old Adobe Mountain View campus) a project was born called Network Post Script (NPS for short.) It was a marvelous little project where one could store Post Script binaries on one computer and a Network Post Script Reader (NPSR) could access this data on the remote computer for display locally. It was keen, it was marvelous and it worked very, very well.

Then one day, someone said, "Let's open up this binary format to the world so many could write their own rendering software so NPS can be seen on many different types of computers!"

"No! No! No!" the marketing execs said, "We shall keep all this in house and we can sell bazillions of copies to every computer on the Internet -- we'll be rich."

But alas, HTML came about and not only was the format open, it was text readable! The Internet rejoiced and suddenly there were these text rendering engines called "web browsers" that were written to parse HTML. Happy HTML spread like wildfire and the World Wide Web was born. NPS, was forgotten, left in a server high atop a corporate building in downtown San Jose and died of lost potential.

The End
_____________

Some people never learn! Here comes HTML5 baby!

 

[marksman]

This is great news, if it's true. I think it would be great if you could access the non-flash version on a computer too, so I could actually watch the show without hearing the fans roaring in background.

It goes both ways.

Umm.. the article stated it was more important in one direction and I said it was the opposite.

Nobody said that it did not go both ways.

The reality, though, is Hulu needs to make themselves as available to as many viewers as possible as opposed to Apple who will be relatively unscathed if hulu is not accessible from the iPad.

 

[chimerical]

I don't know if you've ever tested these sites on the iPhone OS, but I'm going to have to call you out on some of those.

- Vimeo on the iPhone redirects to vimeo.com/m, and the videos work.
- Facebook on the iPhone redirects to touch.facebook.com, and it's a very capable webapp
- BBC redirects to bbc.co.uk/mobile/i
- Disney redirects to home.disney.go.com/iphone/index
- Nike redirects to nike.com/nikeos/p/nike_mobile/language_tunnel/?m=iphone
- Sony redirects to m.sony.com
- Snow redirects to snow.com/mobile/home.aspx
- Myspace redirects to m.myspace.com/login.wap?bfd=webnext&isredirect=true
- Adidas redirects to m.adidas.tv
- Philips UK renders fine as the full site
- PapervisionShowcase renders fine as the full site

The only ones that are entirely inaccessible are:
- Tokyoplastic
- Philips Cinema
- and your own, Prowlmedia UK

Not one of these works properly on the iphone...
www.disney.com (!)
www.tokyoplastic.com
www.nike.com
www.adidas.com
www.philips.co.uk
www.sony.com/index.php
www.bbc.com
www.facebook.com - no the app doesn't count.
www.myspace.com
www.prowl.co.uk (ours - slipped that in!)
www.vimeo.com
www.snow.com
All these....http://www.papervisionshowcase.com/
the utterly awesome site http://www.cinema.philips.com/?ls=gb_en
http://www.snow.com/

Blue boxes everywhere!

 

[pondie84]

The only ones that are entirely inaccessible are:
- Tokyoplastic
- Philips Cinema
- and your own, Prowlmedia UK

The iPad won't access prowlmedia UK? That's a dealbreaker ladies.

 

[chimerical]

Here are sites from that list that work on the iPhone, not off the top of my head, but actually verified.

EPSN redirects to m.espn.go.com/wireless/index?w=197wt&i=COM
eBay redirects to iphone.ebay.com
USPS redirects to mobile.usps.com/iphone
UPS redirects to ups.com/content/us/en/index.jsx?flash=false
Weather.com redirects to mw.weather.com

The only possible exception is
FedEx, whose full site works, aside from the Flash-based self-ad called their "Promotions Center"

other sites that require flash, off the top of my head, include:

espn.com
ebay.com
usps.com
fedx.com
ups.com
weather.com

 

[bludodge]

This will be a deal maker for me to buy an iPad, so much more useful to me than a camera ( or reading ebooks). I only hooked up internet in my new apt, and so being able to watch hulu here and anywhere else would be really nice.

 

[cvaldes]

The only possible exception is
FedEx, whose full site works, aside from the Flash-based self-ad called their "Promotions Center"

You can use a mobile version of the FedEx website at http://www.fedex.com/mobi/

There's an iPhone-specific link at the page which provides nicer iPhone graphics.

 

[gigi1701]

They might not bother... my understanding is that it's not that hard to record the Flash content, if you really want to do it. But I don't personally know anyone who bothers....

Yes, it is ridiculously easy to record Flash videos, I don't do it much, there is hardly anything out there I care to watch more than once, but if I do, I know how to do it.

*ETA* The times I do record is so I can put the flash video in a format so I can watch on my iPod touch!!

 

[bretm]

Praise cheeses for the downfall of Flash. It's a bitch-dog even on Windows. There is no reason why the low-quality video that Flash provides should take up so much bandwidth and system resources.

uh-it's the exact same h.264 files you'll be seeing without flash, just in a qt wrapper instead of a much more functional .swf. Seriously what kind of magical bandwith and resource magic is going to happen? HTML 5 and JavaScript will take up a huge resource, the video will be the same, but you'll get an inconsistent experience. Just like the difference between js and HTML 4 and css. Ever try to make a website consistent across browsers? It doesn't happen. Unless, you use flash.

 

[gigi1701]

Seeing as currently only two marginal browser
(as an aside, is the MASSIVE IRONY of Apple fanboys wishing death to Adobe not lost on anyone?)

As a website designer, I do not wish death to Adobe, I depend on DreamWeaver to make my sites, and InDesign and Photoshop to create the design ideas. However, I do not like Flash that much, I have used it since it is the most cross browser/platform compatible right now, but it is not without major issues too. I am coding in javascript mostly and for video I will be supporting H.264 on my sites. I will keep a flash version up, but the sooner I can get away from it the better. I have heard the SVG format is what Adobe was creating as an open source alternative to the Flash format, and word is it maybe be coming back, I am all for that!

Flash is so last millennium, the iPad is the tool for our time, move on from Flash already (which was created by Macromedia anyway!)

 

[bretm]

Here are sites from that list that work on the iPhone, not off the top of my head, but actually verified.

EPSN redirects to m.espn.go.com/wireless/index?w=197wt&i=COM
eBay redirects to iphone.ebay.com
USPS redirects to mobile.usps.com/iphone
UPS redirects to ups.com/content/us/en/index.jsx?flash=false
Weather.com redirects to mw.weather.com

The only possible exception is
FedEx, whose full site works, aside from the Flash-based self-ad called their "Promotions Center"

so do you enjoynthose tiny little graphic free sites? They're gonna look just great on a 10" ipad. I can accept a mini net on a phone, bug I want the real deal on a 10" screen.

 

[bretm]

As a website designer, I do not wish death to Adobe, I depend on DreamWeaver to make my sites, and InDesign and Photoshop to create the design ideas. However, I do not like Flash that much, I have used it since it is the most cross browser/platform compatible right now, but it is not without major issues too. I am coding in javascript mostly and for video I will be supporting H.264 on my sites. I will keep a flash version up, but the sooner I can get away from it the better. I have heard the SVG format is what Adobe was creating as an open source alternative to the Flash format, and word is it maybe be coming back, I am all for that!

Flash is so last millennium, the iPad is the tool for our time, move on from Flash already (which was created by Macromedia anyway!)

Yeah. Macromedia makes such crap. Like final cut pro and dreamweaver. by the way, mm bought flash. It was called
futuresplash.

 

[FrankieTDouglas]

I don't know if you've ever tested these sites on the iPhone OS, but I'm going to have to call you out on some of those.

- Vimeo on the iPhone redirects to vimeo.com/m, and the videos work.
- Facebook on the iPhone redirects to touch.facebook.com, and it's a very capable webapp
- BBC redirects to bbc.co.uk/mobile/i
- Disney redirects to home.disney.go.com/iphone/index
- Nike redirects to nike.com/nikeos/p/nike_mobile/language_tunnel/?m=iphone
- Sony redirects to m.sony.com
- Snow redirects to snow.com/mobile/home.aspx
- Myspace redirects to m.myspace.com/login.wap?bfd=webnext&isredirect=true
- Adidas redirects to m.adidas.tv
- Philips UK renders fine as the full site
- PapervisionShowcase renders fine as the full site

The only ones that are entirely inaccessible are:
- Tokyoplastic
- Philips Cinema
- and your own, Prowlmedia UK

Ah, but isn't that a "watered down version of the internet," or the "mobile version of the internet," or the "kinda sorta looks like the internet," rather than "just... the internet"?

In case Apple's marketing escapes your memory, here's a refresher: http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/06/found-footage-just-the-internet-on-your-phone/

 

[gigi1701]

uh-it's the exact same h.264 files you'll be seeing without flash, just in a qt wrapper instead of a much more functional .swf. Seriously what kind of magical bandwith and resource magic is going to happen? HTML 5 and JavaScript will take up a huge resource, the video will be the same, but you'll get an inconsistent experience. Just like the difference between js and HTML 4 and css. Ever try to make a website consistent across browsers? It doesn't happen. Unless, you use flash.

Not sure this is entirely true, I have encoded my videos in .flv format, if that is h.264 wrapped in something else then way bother encoding in .flv? Also why is it easy to watch youtube on my iPod touch? Why is it that I can watch h.264 on my MacBook Pro without the fans going crazy from the processor drain? Only Hulu has claimed they already encode in h.264, they are only saying that they don't need to recode all of their video, just the player. Why do you say javascript is resource intensive? I have not experienced that in my coding for my websites. And at least in my experience javascript is consistent across browsers (only been doing this for about twenty years).

It is true that Flash is the most consistent, but you are totally locked in, the spiders can't browse the content, I don't think screen readers can either. I have had to re-code several websites that were done entirely in Flash (by somebody else). Flash is great to totally control your content until someone not using Flash comes by, then they see no site at all. And there are many reasons that people don't use Flash, and all of them way before the iPad was even conceived. And that is my main issue with Flash. I would NEVER put an entire site in Flash (and I have been begged to by clients, and I refuse to waste my time doing that) and I would NEVER put any website navigation in Flash for the same reason. BTW Adobe used to have the navigation menus in Flash for their site, guess what they use now... Javascript!!!

 

[gigi1701]

Yeah. Macromedia makes such crap. Like final cut pro and dreamweaver. by the way, mm bought flash. It was called
futuresplash.

I didn't say it was crap, I said it was OLD. Things have changed html standards have changed and will continue to do so. End users don't need to worry, only developers and web designers like myself have to work to keep up.

As to Macromedia creating Final Cut Pro, that isn't entirely correct. From wikipedia:

Randy Ubillos created the first three versions of Adobe Premiere, the first popular digital video editing application.[2] Before version 5 was released, Ubillos' group was hired by Macromedia to create KeyGrip, built from the ground up as a more professional video-editing program based on Apple QuickTime. Macromedia could not release the product without causing its partner Truevision some issues with Microsoft, as KeyGrip was, in part, based on technology from Microsoft licensed to Truevision and then in turn to Macromedia. The terms of the IP licensing deal stated that it was not to be used in conjunction with QuickTime. Thus, Macromedia was forced to keep the product off the market until a solution could be found. At the same time, the company decided to focus more on applications that would support the web, so they sought to find a buyer for their non-web applications, including KeyGrip; which, by 1998, was renamed Final Cut.

 

[Osnabrueck]

This thread is packed with enough irony to power a small town.

I'm a designer/developer who's been using macs and adobe software since the time before layers, single-pass scanners and live anti-aliasing. For designers in the early 90s apple was the restless insurgent and adobe was supplying the militants with the ammunition they needed to carry on the fight. So to see these once symbiotic forces at loggerheads over flash is truly a sight to behold.

So what's the beef?*

It's simple - apple wants to control their content gateway lock and key. They want the iTunes store to be the only portal for movies, books and games on their portable device and flash poses a problem for them not just from a user experience point of view, but from a content control point of view.

Make no mistake - apple isn't making a prinipled stand for open standards here (talk about more irony), they're using their massive sway to make the web conform to them, instead of conforming to it - all in the name of contorlling which activities must be controlled and monetized on the ipad.

And so began the splinterweb...*

If ou think this move marks the end for flash and the move to HTML5s prominence as the rich content enabler at-large you're mistaken.

Hulu and YouTube will be comfortable delivering h.264 to he ipad for one simple reason: it's a closed box. You can't right-click the video and choose "save to desktop" or archive the file. It's either on your screen or it's not.

And it's for that same reason (and a whole litany more) that HTML5-based content has a long, long way to go before it becomes a ubiquitous standard for web video. As for the balance of rich-media function (or malfunction, as the case may be) Flash isn't going anywhere... *Most of the web-surfing public still lives in the dark ages of IE-based browsers, and getting those people on-board is going to take years... And you have issues with the proprietary h.264 codec and still were nowhewe close to replicaing the (admittadly unnessicary) nature of Flash environments.

So... On one hand I see this news as very good thing. Because it puts a gun to Apple's metaphorical head and asks "Are you opposed to Flash as a delivery platform, or are you opposed to losing control of your walled-garden?"*

It will be VERY interesting to see apples response. Especially when Hulu and Netflix are very direct threats to iTunes march twoards content supremeacy.

Really, I see things only getting stranger from here on in because Apple has created a device that is intent on extendending and strengthening their closed ecosystem, but at the same time - by virtue of it's own capable design - begs one to question the nessesity of this kit-gloves approach.

Anyways, this has been a very long rant and I'm not sure what I thpught my point would really be when I started typi g...

I guess as a combined Apple and Adobe fanboy, seeing things from both sides of the jingoistic fence, this particular clash of interests has for the first time given me a very dim view of Apples intentions.

HTML5 - great as it will be and much as it promises on paper - is a long, long way from becoming the web panacea so many posters here beleieve it to be. And even then, it likely won't surplant flash for reasons too wordy to adaquately stuff into this rant.

The adaptation of hulu has less to do with HTML5 and more to do with the iPads controlled envornment and Apples insistance on air-tight control.

Lastly - much as Flash is a total dog... You guys have to realize what a balancing force Adobe has been against microsofts ambition to control web content (going back over 10 years) and document exchange (PDF). Microsoft planned to make OSX a second-rate environment for consuming video on the web.... The near universal adoption of Flash changed all that. Indirectly, Adobe leveled the playing field and made the web a more neutral place... Via their proprietary plug-in.