Adobe is releasing an update to their popular Flash Player 9 with support for the H.264 video codec.
The updated support will allow Flash Player to take advantage of hardware acceleration provided in computer video cards and is also optimized for Dual-Core processors.
Support for the H.264 standard will lead to more Web video content being available in high definition, Randall said. He said Adobe chose to support the standard now because it is being adopted more by content producers and media distributors like cable companies.
A public beta will be available today at labs.adobe.com, with a final release expected in the fall.
Apple supports H.264 as a standard codec in Quicktime. Meanwhile, Apple and Youtube struck a deal in which Youtube has been encoding their content into H.264 for playback on Apple TV and iPhone. This H.264 content has only been available to Apple TV/iPhone users, but Youtube could conceivably start offering the H.264 content to web visitors with the latest Flash plug-in.
