The famous flash player that we all use when watching internet TV streams on PC from websites such as YouTube and Hulu is coming to your Television set.

Now Adobe Systems, who own the flash technology and sells is looking to extend the players reach onto set top boxes and DVD players and turn flash into the standard for online video.

A battle is currently taking place for a standard single format for internet video and tv. The big studios and content creators really want it so that their slice of entertainment can be instantly available on numerous devices besides a PC.

“Coming generations of consumers clearly expect to get their content wherever they want on it, on any device, when they want it,” said Bud Albers, the chief technology officer of the Disney Interactive Media Group, who will join Adobe executives at the convention to voice Disney’s support for the Flash format. “This gets us where we want to go.”

Adobe, who are based in California are best known for popular desktop publishing tools like Illustrator and Photoshop. They acquired Macromedia in 2005, the creator of Flash, and expanded from making software to create and share digital documents, like Adobe Acrobat and the PDF file format, to dominating the budding market of tools to create online graphics and video. Last year the company reported net income of $871.8 million on revenue of $3.6 billion.

If you listen to Adobe, then Flash is installed on 98% of all PC’s, and 80% of all online videos are viewed using a flash player.

They also claim that Flash was installed in 40% of mobile cell phones last year, and it recently announced efforts to increase that penetration by abolishing the licensing fees it was charging handset makers, much as it offers the Flash player free to consumers and video sites like YouTube.

Adobe makes money on Flash by selling software to help companies create and deliver Flash content to the Web.

Some major players in the phone market do not support Flash. Most notably, Apple, maker of the iPhone, says Flash uses too much processing and battery power. Mr. Narayen says handset makers will ultimately not be able to resist, since it will make viewing the Web on a phone no different from surfing on a PC.

“Anyone who wishes to deliver Web browsing on smartphone devices, supporting Flash will be an integral part of the experience,” he said.

Despite its problems wooing Apple, Adobe considers the television screen the last great frontier for Flash. To support the new effort to bring Flash to the TV, it has signed partners including Intel, Comcast, Netflix and Broadcom, the company that makes many of the components that go into cable and satellite set-top boxes. (The New York Times Company has also agreed to support this initiative to bring Flash to the TV set.)

While television makers like Sony and Samsung are not involved yet, analysts say integrating Flash, or at least some kind of Internet video into the living room television is inevitable.

“It’s hard to differentiate TVs these days. They’ve gotten about as big and thin as you can get them,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Interpret LLC. “This idea of being able to standardize on Flash based content across devices and platforms will be something TV companies can get excited about because it will distinguish their products.”

One company standing in Adobe’s way is Microsoft. Its rival to Flash, called Silverlight, is used by Netflix and the BBC, among others, and was used by CBS to stream the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament and by NBC last year to stream the Olympics.

Silverlight’s second release has been installed on over 300 million PC’s since release six months ago according to Microsoft. It also claims that Silverlight better supports live, HD video in whats known as 1080p resolution, which is important in bringing Internet streaming to large High Definition TV sets.

“I cannot imagine what could be more important on a television than high video quality,” said Brad Becker, former Adobe exec and director of rich client platforms at Microsoft. Adobe executives say the new Flash for televisions will support such HD streaming.

Some analysts are not dismissing Microsoft though. They state that the company have a big presence in homes already with devices like the Xbox 360 which can stream movies to a TV set. Microsoft, have the resources to finance a major battle with Adobe.

“There hasn’t been a true competitor to Adobe for quite some time and Microsoft could potentially start bridging the gap between the PC and the TV even more effectively,” said Josh Martin, an analyst at the Yankee Group. “Maybe they could start putting out some of the fire that Adobe has long held.”

Looks like a straight fight between Adobe and Microsoft. Bring it on.

Incoming TV searches:

doitlive tv, doitlive tv flash player, flash player tv, You need to upgrade your Flash Player in order to watch movies from doitlive tv, flash player for tv, tv flash player, flash tv player, You need to upgrade your Flash Player in order to watch movies from doitlive, www doitlive tv, doitlivetv

Related posts:

1. Netflix using new media player for instant tv streaming
2. ITV online TV player rebranded
3. Joost gets a boost with Flash video integration
4. Hulu internet TV coming to Xbox 360
5. Adobe cock up lets you watch pay Movies and TV Shows free!