Flash Comes To the iPad Via RipCode

suraj.sun writes "Texas-based company RipCode has announced a new 'clientless Flash video codec' that will allow Flash content to be streamed on Apple's iPad. This would include sites like Hulu and YouTube, assuming the respective companies don't find a way to block it. According to RipCode's press release, the TransAct Transcoder V6 captures the iPad's request for Flash content and converts it into a special format that the device accepts and plays. This is all done without a local client or user intervention. 'RipCode's Transactional Transcoding platform enables an alternate and immediate solution to this issue, opening up video content to users without requiring the content hoster to move to HTML5 or pre-transcode entire video libraries from Flash to an iPad-accepted container format. By transcoding the content "in the cloud," it is essentially analogous to a network-based Flash to MP4 or MPEG-TS video adaption layer.'"

This meets all of Apple's requirements except one

[aapold]

Killing flash.

Thus, I'll expect they'll patch in a way to detect and block this ASAP.

Re:This meets all of Apple's requirements except o

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares really? Even macworld [macworld.com] says the iPhad is crap.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:This meets all of Apple's requirements except o

[Yvanhoe]

It does.
From what I understand, this reads flash videos without using flash code. There is a difference between flash code and flash codec. One is an insecure runtime that is a blatant hole inside a device's security and allows arbitrary code execution, the other is just a regular video codec that VLC can read.

Re:This meets all of Apple's requirements except o

[Anonymous Coward]

This could actually hasten the demise of flash (assuming that's actually going to happen at all...)

Just like the iPad is already changing the face of the Internet(assuming that's actually going to happen at all...)

Re:So long Flash, now get the hell out

[chdig]

Flash runs animations far better than SVG, and for the web is the best thing out there to do what it does (or would you prefer Silverlight?) HTML5 doesn't replace Flash, and doesn't even try to. It brings video into html, so it no longer needs to be embedded into Flash, but doesn't remotely replace it. RipCode isn't interactive, and the real value of Flash is its flexibility with interactive content.

Flash is also a platform with almost no limitations as to how you use it, closed-source, but you can run whatever you like -- just like Windows, but free to install. The iPad/iPhone is closed to non-approved applications, making it the least open platform out there. So let me rephrase what the parent posted:

I'm all for the demise of the iPhone/iPad. It is a necessary evil but let's get rid of them. This could be one way. Flash may or may not be the way to go, that is yet to be seen. However this is the open web people.

--

Flash is closed-source. The iPhone/iPad are closed to running what applications you want on them, which to me is as closed as you can get. In this case, Flash may be the poster-boy for open application environments.

Re:to flash or not to flash

[cpghost]

I too wished Flash went away, because of Adobe's non-support of FreeBSD. This why such on-the-fly transcoding services are highly welcome here.

Re:This meets all of Apple's requirements except o

[fermion]

Exactly. Many people don't notice, and would be perfectly happy, not to have the flash sites where menus do unexpected things and objects float around and otherwise don't let you get anything done.

And fonts are so 1990. Most of us are so over being wowed by the fact that a site has 10 fonts that should have never been allowed to be on the same page.

About the only two things that most people see as useful flash is watch movies and, maybe, google finance and the like. For kids the flash games are important. Most users would be perfectly happy with the former in a non-flash wrapper, since the only reason it is to provide some primitive form of DRM.

But, really, without the movies flash could go away and many would never notice. Except, of course, for the ad agencies.