Content is king, so Adobe Media Player doesn't rule, OK?

Stephen Withers
Friday, 20 June 2008 10:58

Opinion and Analysis

Adobe's very proud of its new AIR-based Media Player, and of the fact that it has garnered 15,000 pieces of content including 400 shows from major broadcasters and publishers in just over two months. That's fine if you're in the US, but what about the rest of the world?

When I previously tried Adobe Media Player, I quickly became frustrated by the lack of available content, so following Adobe's "15,000" announcement I took another look.

After all, Adobe had claimed "viewers can now use Adobe Media Player to discover, organize, and subscribe to an added selection of MTVN's popular shows, including clips from Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report."

Right, I thought, let's give The Daily Show a whirl. No joy: all I get is "This video is currently not available in your country."

The Colbert Report? "This video is currently not available in your country."

Other front page items such as MTVNews? "This video is currently not available in your country."

Jericho? "This content is currently unavailable." But how exciting - the message was spoken rather than just being displayed on the screen.

Woop-de-doo.

So what's the story? Find out on page 2.