Flash Player 10.1 Beta Offloads Video Processing to GPU

From DailyTech: Adobe's Flash technology is highly prevalent on the internet both in terms of site content and online advertising. Video is powered by Flash on a number of sites large and small including Hulu where millions go to watch their favorite TV shows.

Adobe has announced today that a new update is available as a beta called Flash Player 10.1. The update is notable because it adds GPU acceleration features to the Flash Player allowing the acceleration of video to be offloaded from the CPU. High resolution flash video processing is traditionally very CPU intensive meaning that playback at sites like Hulu is typically choppy no matter how fast your computer runs.

Flash Player 10.1 is the first consistent browser runtime release of the Open Screen Project. The new version promises to enable uncompressed web browsing of application and HD videos across desktops and devices like smartphones and tablets. Adobe reports that the new player version delivers media using HTTP streaming with content protection powered by Adobe Flash Access 2.0.

The key upgrade for Flash 10.1 is that the player can now use hardware decoding of H.264 video on Windows PCs, notebooks, and mobile devices. The new version of Flash Player also supports Mac and Linux. Adobe has also issued a new update for AIR to AIR 2 that allows developers to create feature rich applications in the desktop context.

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