News
Skyfire will display Flash video on iOS devices
By Jesse Hollington
Social Media & Software Editor, iLoungeGoogle+
Published: Wednesday, November 3, 2010
News Categories: Apps + Games, Other
CNNMoney reports that Skyfire, a web browser app that can be used to view Flash video, had been approved by Apple and is expected to be available for download on Thursday. Skyfire will allow users to view Flash videos from the web by using intermediate proxy servers to transcode them to an iOS-friendly HTML5 and MPEG-4/H.264 standard before streaming them to the user’s device. When using Skyfire to browse to a web site containing Flash video, a thumbnail will be displayed that the user can tap on to stream the video content to their device from Skyfire’s servers. The report notes that Skyfire will be designed to translate only video content and can’t be used to translate games or other non-video Flash content. Adobe estimates that nearly 75% of online video is encoded in Flash, however other studies have noted that many of these sites encode videos in other formats in addition to Flash to provide compatibility with a broader range of devices. However, Skyfire’s CEO estimates that Skyfire will provide access to millions of web sites that were previously unavailable to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users. CNNMoney also notes however that one major Flash-based service, Hulu, will not be available as the company has blocked the Skyfire service from being able to download its videos. It is unclear whether other similar streaming services may also follow suit.
Update (11/03/2010): Skyfire is now available from the App Store—a day earlier than expected.
Update (11/04/2010): Skyfire has been temporarily removed from the App Store by the developer due to excessive demand and server performance problems.
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1
Wow, that took a while! It was submitted back in early September, so about two months to get approval. Seems a bit excessive to me…
This could be useful for casual flash playback, like say viewing videos on Engadget. Wasn’t expecting it to work on Hulu so not disappointed about that.
I am disappointed it won’t work to render flash sites like Hotels and Restaurants that are written in all flash. Odd that it won’t really. I wonder if that’s something they had to do to get Apple’s approval?
Will have to see how this works. Seems likely their servers will be flooded initially. Question is whether it eventually works out or not.
Posted by Glenn Connery on November 2, 2010 at 10:29 AM (PST)
2
Anytime there is an intermediate server involved I wonder about security. Maybe it’s time to learn more about how exactly this sort of thing works.
Posted by Usdrowski on November 2, 2010 at 11:14 AM (PST)
3
Not available in the Canadian Apple iTunes store yet, still a no go.
Posted by Derrick on November 3, 2010 at 4:52 PM (PST)
4
You might want to update the article again, it’s been pulled by the developer because it sold out.
Posted by Jim Jenkins on November 3, 2010 at 6:33 PM (PST)
5
It sold out? Someone care to explain that?
Posted by Russell Schneider on November 3, 2010 at 7:37 PM (PST)
6
Apparently their Flash to HTML5 servers are overwhelmed by demand, so they’ve pulled the app.
Presumably they will re-launch with increased server capacity at some point, as users report significant crashes and limited functionality.
Posted by Paul Watson on November 4, 2010 at 4:18 AM (PST)
7
Glenn - I am no expert, but this is what I think about the reason that sites built on Flash will not work:
This app focuses on trans-coding video into an iOS compatible language (HTML-5 or MPEG-4). Sites that are built on Flash using animations and other…well…“flashy” gimmicks do not translate into those video formats. They are not video. So they would need some other means of displaying this content. And I am not sure such an entity exists.
But again, I am no expert. Just spouting something that I assume.
Posted by Mitch on November 4, 2010 at 5:26 AM (PST)