The first thing that strikes me is the quality of the H.264 video from YouTube. Its truly the best I've seen so far. The next thing is how damn slow the FLASH user interface is. The CE3100 is running at 800Mhz, according to Engadget, that is a 1.2GHz Atom equivalent. There is PowerVR 3D hardware in the device. And this is FLASH lite , not FLASH 10. Its running at 2-3 frames per second I guess. This is on the edge of simply being unuseable: for sure it would be at least annoying.
It begs the question, is FLASH a really great way to quickly design slow user interfaces? To this date, I have not seen any FLASH demos that impress in terms of graphics and useability.
According to Digital Cable News:
Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC) has used Flash in some of its boxes for several years, but industry sources say the MSO is in the process of phasing it out. However, Time Warner Cable is said to still be interested in the potential of Flash, and could consider it as an execution engine in digital set-top boxes later on.Meanwhile Digital Cable News reports Comcast are approaching FLASH cautiously:
"We do want to see this [Flash] ship on actual set-top boxes," Comcast senior vice president and chief software architect Sree Kotay tells Cable Digital News. But he envisions Comcast starting out with more "lightweight" apps that can be embedded with the IPG, such as email readers and weather widgets.
Getting even to that point will take a while. Comcast is busy in 2009 getting base tru2way architecture deployed in the first place. The addition of Flash could be as much as 24 months away, Kotay says.
It seems clear right now that adopting a FLASH strategy as the core for application delivery for a set top box project would be a bad idea. The power to deliver compelling user interfaces and applications simply isn't there today. A better approach seems to be to base on proven faster software and integrate FLASH for secondary applications, as Comcast are doing.
This won't be free though. The effort of integrating FLASH and getting it working together with an existing, proven, fast environment will cost someone money. Whereas Time Warner and Comcast can afford these kinds of progressive projects, not everyone can. Can operators really make money from integrating FLASH at this time? FLASH is at the peak of the Gartner hype cycle. The cost of implementation is hidden somewhere deep in the trough at this time.
FLASH per se is a great idea. Its easy to see why the idea of FLASH is so popular. At least for now though, the idea is much greater than the reality in my opinion.
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