Adobe player frees viewers to watch video offline

By Eric Auchard

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Adobe Systems Inc. unveiled on Sunday video-player software that lets consumers play back video online or offline, a move that could help reshape an acrimonious debate over video-sharing.

Adobe Video Player builds on the leading design software maker's Flash player, already the dominant technology used to stream video online by sites ranging from YouTube to MySpace to MSN to Yahoo Video.

The video player is due to become available to consumers over the next several months, Adobe officials said.

Analysts hailed the new Adobe Video player as a technology breakthrough by allowing consumers to download and carry video from the Web to computers to mobile phones, while ensuring programmers can deliver advertising and track video usage.

Rival video players such as Windows Media Player from Microsoft Corp., QuickTime from Apple Inc. and RealPlayer from RealNetworks Inc. run on a range of devices but have none of the offline tracking features.

"Adobe has created the first way for media companies to release video content, secure in the knowledge that advertising goes with it," Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey said.

"Control is something that media companies absolutely get high on," he said.

Fearful of piracy, media companies have been slow to release much of their TV, film and video programming onto the Web.