Time Warner teams up with Adobe: Will HBO.com go all Flash?
Adobe and Time Warner team up to bring Flash video to several of Time Warner's properties--in the future that is. HBO.com may be the first.
Time Warner and Adobe Systems announced on Monday a strategic and non-exclusive alliance wherein the two companies will work with one another to build DRM and Flash publishing into three of Time Warner's properties. Included in the alliance is Warner Bros. Entertainment, Turner Broadcasting System, and Home Box office.
Of the three properties, one of the first to see a real benefit will be Home Box Office. As part of the announcement, Time Warner said that HBO.com would soon be relaunched "making extensive use of the Adobe Flash Platform." In theory this would replace the content provider's "HBO on Broadband" application which is currently limited to subscribers of Wisconsin's Time Warner service and requires a PC, leaving Mac users out in the cold. (Update: HBO on Broadband isn't going anywhere--see below)
In an phone interview on Monday, Jen Taylor, Adobe's director of product management for Flash, said Time Warner was interested in Flash's built-in analytics and metadata services, the latter of which Taylor said makes navigation and exploration of content easier to build from scratch.
Time Warner is already using Flash to power streaming shows on The WB, movie trailers and TV shows at Warnerbrothers.com, and live and archived streaming news on CNN.com.
Update: HBO's Jeff Cusson says the alliance will have no affect on HBO on Broadband. "HBO.com is a promotional website for the network and operates, and will continue to operate, completely separate from HBO on Broadband."