Bringing hardware video decoding to mobile devices

Apr 7, 2010 08:09 GMT  ·  By

Hardware acceleration for online content is just around the corner, as Adobe has barely released Flash Player 10.1 Release Candidate, which brings hardware-assisted video decoding and gaming. On supported platforms, this should translate into better performance and less CPU utilization, which is always a nice thing to get, but is especially useful on underpowered devices like netbooks or smartphones.

"A prerelease version of Flash Player 10.1 is now available for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and Solaris operating systems," Adobe announced on its Adobe Labs website. "This public prerelease is an opportunity for developers to test and provide early feedback to Adobe on new features, enhancements, and compatibility with previously authored content. Consumers can try the prerelease of Flash Player 10.1 to preview hardware acceleration of video on supported Windows PCs and x86-based netbooks."

Flash Player 10.1 isn't labeled as a major release, but the few features that it brings make it a very interesting piece of software. The most touted new feature is the support for hardware acceleration, which makes use of the capabilities of the latest GPUs and media chips available in most modern PCs and mobile devices.

There are two main areas that benefit from this, online video and Flash-based gaming. By utilizing the hardware video-decoding support, Flash can offload the task to the GPU leaving the CPU to handle other needs. Full 1,080p and sometimes even 720p videos can pose a problem for lower end PCs and laptops and watching them becomes a slideshow if some other tasks are running in the background. If you have one of the supported GPUs, this shouldn't be an issue any more.

But this is an even bigger problem for netbooks, smartphones, tablets and other small devices that are powered by lower spec CPUs. Video decoding is one of the hardest tasks these CPUs will have to perform and most fail to provide a satisfactory experience. With GPU hardware acceleration, HD video becomes a possibility even on the smallest of screens.

For gaming, it's the same thing. PCs have no trouble handling the simplistic graphics of most Flash-based games, but they can be a problem for mobile devices. And, with hardware acceleration, developers can start creating more demanding games knowing that most people will be able to play them.

But Flash Player 10.1 brings other things to the table. For one, it will be available for more platforms, including most mobile ones with the very notable exception of the iPhone OS. Adobe says the new player is also more efficient and loads faster. Chrome users who have enabled the support for the integrated Flash Player should already be running the latest candidate version. Everyone else can grab it from the links below.

Flash Player 10.1 Release Candidate for Windows is available for download here. Flash Player 10.1 Release Candidate for Mac is available for download here. Flash Player 10.1 Release Candidate for Linux is available for download here. (note that the 64-bit version is still labeled as an alpha and is not offered here)