Adobe updates Flash Player 9 "Moviestar" to include H.264 video support

Adobe has announced that its popular Flash Player 9, codenamed “Moviestar”, is being updated to include the H.264 / MPEG4 standard video format. This, together with technologies including High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio support and hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced full screen video playback, could lead the way to Flash Player being used for high definition content.

It could also have implications for how popular video sharing services such as YouTube and MySpace operate, although YouTube is already moving to the H.264 format used by Quicktime so that videos can be played back on the iPhone, which currently doesn’t have Flash support.

The beta version of the Player is available now from labs.adobe.com, with a full version of the software expected in the autumn.

Adobe’s upgrade is likely to be in direct response to the challenge from