Adobe Media Player - a Video Browser/Downloader

Adobe recently released the official 1.0 version of the Adobe Media Player, one of the first products from Adobe to use the AIR development tool (Flash-based applications on the desktop that tie into the Internet, such as the still-in-beta Buzzword word processor). I took the Adobe Media Player for a spin, and this is what I found.

First, on my Mac at least, it tended to be a little slow. Not necessarily slow to interact with the Internet (although it did feel as if some of the videos were a bit slow to download, which led to a bit of pausing while the video buffered), but also slow to respond to interaction. For instance, I would click a button and the application wouldn't respond immediately. We're not talking five seconds or anything, but there were times when I had to wait a second, just to see if my click had registered.

But I realize I'm getting ahead of myself. What is the Adobe Media Player?

The Adobe Media Player has designs on being YouTube, but for the corporate world. It wants to be a portal where television networks, such as the already-signed HGTV, MTV, CBS and Comedy Central, can provide users like you and me with clips from their shows. We can search through available videos, watch them, tag them as favorites... even organize our own video collections, all with Adobe Media Player.

At the moment, the Adobe Media Player suffers a bit for being so new. And while there are certainly no shortage of content providers, at the moment the "content" is little more than clips from the shows. CBS may advertise that CSI:NY is available on the Adobe Media Player (and it is), but that doesn't mean that tons of full shows are available for viewing (at the moment there are four). The same could be said of "The Hills," from MTV, another show that is in rotation on the main page. In all honesty, it pales a bit in the face of Hulu.com, NBC's answer to file sharing, which offers large amounts of full episodes, from dozens and dozens of shows.

Still, Adobe Media Player is only at version 1.0, and the idea - hopefully - is to get more content.