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Flash back in the UK courtesy of the BBC - not for long.
alanwarwic
31-08-2012
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...gle-play-store

"reportedly due to pressure from media firms that still rely on the Adobe runtime environment such as the BBC. But Android users will need to get in quick to get the app downloaded."

It was made obvious the BBC was not best pleased by the fact that they actually made public they were asking Adobe to participate.
alanwarwic
01-09-2012
A further (opinion?) update.

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/...live-in-the-uk

"It has come back because of pressure from large organisations, in particular the BBC, whose popular iPlayer video on demand service uses Flash. The Android app is back, apparently or as long as it takes the BBC to move to HTML5.""
denyo1977
01-09-2012
Although I do understand that Flash isn't the future, I think it was/is far too early to scrap it completely on Android. Hopefully it will take the BBC a while to move to HTML5.
flagpole
01-09-2012
the bbc reported a couple of weeks ago that they were testing a new version of iPlayer.

it looked to be shockwave based.
wilt
01-09-2012
Shockwave?! That's a blast from the past.
Daveoc64
01-09-2012
Adobe is still pushing AIR as an alternative to Flash on Android (as well as iOS), so that would be one option for the BBC.

Channel 4 has also suggested that they're looking at an alternative for Android users.
flagpole
01-09-2012
Originally Posted by wilt:
“Shockwave?! That's a blast from the past.”

i don't know a great deal about shockwave.

but from what i read re iplayer it was suggested as the easiest move.
grumpyoldbat
02-09-2012
Given that the BBC iPlayer app for iPhone already uses HTML5, surely it'll take them minimal time to port it to Android. It's not like they didn't have months of warning from Adobe that flash was being deprecated.
Daveoc64
02-09-2012
Originally Posted by grumpyoldbat:
“Given that the BBC iPlayer app for iPhone already uses HTML5, surely it'll take them minimal time to port it to Android. It's not like they didn't have months of warning from Adobe that flash was being deprecated.”

The iOS App does not use HTML5.

HTML 5 video is not liked by content producers because it offers no DRM.

HTML 5 video by itself also has many limitations when compared to Flash.

The iOS BBC iPlayer App uses HTTP Live Streaming (as do most video Apps on iOS),

The problem with that is that early versions of Android don't support it, so you have to do two versions (e.g. Flash and HTTP Live Streaming) or you have to restrict your App to a subset of users.
The Phazer
03-09-2012
Originally Posted by Daveoc64:
“The iOS BBC iPlayer App uses HTTP Live Streaming (as do most video Apps on iOS),

The problem with that is that early versions of Android don't support it, so you have to do two versions (e.g. Flash and HTTP Live Streaming) or you have to restrict your App to a subset of users.”

Not really, the problem is that all code on iOS has to be signed and Apple don't allow through streamrippers.

Not the case on Android.
Roush
03-09-2012
It's a combination of both problems.

HTTP Live Streaming support was only added to Android in version 3.0, which means 81% of Android devices still don't support it (Google's own figures).

Add to that the complications of implementing DRM on Android and it's not hard to see why developers just defaulted to Flash for content delivery.
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