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BBC to Migrate Android App Platform From Flash to Adobe Air
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The UK based television broadcaster, the BBC has announced how it will be replacing its Flash based media player on Android smartphones.
The broadcaster offers a mobile app for watching TV shows, which relies on the Flash player which Adobe had removed from the Google Play app store. Adobe reversed the decision for UK customers following pressure from the BBC while it worked on a non-Flash based app.
The BBC has now announced the launch of its replacement "BBC Media Player" which will be available on its website for PC based playback, and released for Android smartphones next week.
The company said that in developing the replacement Android App, it needed a service that protected its DRM rights, while also being backwards compatible with older versions of the Android OS.
In a blog post, the broadcaster explained that it looked at a number of different solutions, for example, Http Live Streaming (HLS) which is used to stream BBC media to other platforms. Unfortunately, they noted that HLS isn't supported on Android OS versions prior to Honeycomb.
In the end, they concluded that Flash was still the best choice of media format to use, and that the only practical technology for them to play this format back on Android is Adobe Air.
"We are making this change with our eyes open. No technology is perfect. We've seen some of the challenges that other Adobe Air based apps have had in the marketplace and so we have worked hard, both internally and with our technology partners to build the best application we can." wrote Chris Yanda, Executive Product Manager, POD Mobile Management, BBC Future Media.
The replacement Android app will be released next week.
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