German court re-locks iPhone; Adobe's Flash 9 with H.264 support

[AppleInsider]

A German court on Tuesday overturned a temporary injunction against T-Mobile which had order the wireless carrier to offer Apple's iPhone to customers unlocked and without a service contract. Meanwhile, Adobe has released a new version of Flash 9 that includes H.264 high-definition video support.

iPhone re-locked in Germany

T-Mobile can go back to selling Apple's iPhone exclusively and locked to its own service, a German court ruled Tuesday, reversing an injunction last month requiring the company to sell an unlocked version in Europe's biggest economy.

The Hamburg District Court said the Deutsche Telekom mobile unit can force customers who purchase the touch-screen handset to take out a T-Mobile contract and can continue to offer the device with a locked SIM card.

"We are pleased with the outcome," T-Mobile spokesman Rene Bresken said.

The company will reportedly stop selling an unlocked version but said that after customers' contracts expire, it will unlock their iPhone at no charge.

Adobe Flash 9 with H.264 support

Meanwhile, Adobe on Tuesday announced the immediate availability of Flash Player 9 Update 3 software, previously code named Moviestar.

The San Jose, Calif.-based software maker said Flash Player 9 now includes H.264 standard video support, the same standard deployed in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD high definition video players, and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio capabilities.

The latest update also features hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced, full-screen video playback for high-resolution viewing across major operating systems and browsers.

Adobe said it will extend support for H.264 flash to applications developed for Adobe AIR software, a cross-operating system application runtime that enables developers to use their existing skills to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop.

Expected to be available in early 2008, Adobe Media Player, the first application from Adobe built on Adobe AIR, will leverage both H.264 video and HE-AAC audio support.

Adobe Flash Player 9 is immediately available as a free download for Windows, Macintosh and Linux platforms from this website.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[schmidm77]

Good. This has nothing to do with market freedom as there are multiple service providers and numerous choices for devices. This is about a single device manufacturer, and consumers wanting to bully it into selling its device against its wishes. Consumers still have the choice not to buy, which will cause Apple to react by altering its prices or future service agreements. That is how markets work.

[studiomusic]

Originally Posted by schmidm77

Good. This has nothing to do with market freedom as there are multiple service providers and numerous choices for devices. This is about a single device manufacturer, and consumers wanting to bully it into selling its device against its wishes. Consumers still have the choice not to buy, which will cause Apple to react by altering its prices or future service agreements. That is how markets work.

It's amazing how people don't understand that.

[freelander51]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

The Hamburg District Court said the Deutsche Telekom mobile unit can force customers who purchase the touch-screen handset to take out a T-Mobile contract and can continue to offer the device with a locked SIM card.

I guess this should silence the critic of "uhh the big bad government interfering in our daily lives" and who claimed that for some strange reason Germany was on the brink of communism and wanting to send in the Marines...

I guess Germany is still a democracy with an independent justice system

[Marvin]

Excellent news on the H264. I seriously hope that more and more people move to H264 and get rid of WMV as a popular format. Shifting youtube to it should be a huge help as all people will have to do is get the new version of flash.

[clickmyface]

I wonder if a new version of flash means anything for the iPhone/Touch Safari browser. I know they have indicated its coming, and I wonder if this means its nearly time.

I hope so, it would only add to the continued awesomeness of the devices.

[TitoC]

Originally Posted by clickmyface

I wonder if a new version of flash means anything for the iPhone/Touch Safari browser. I know they have indicated its coming, and I wonder if this means its nearly time.

I hope so, it would only add to the continued awesomeness of the devices.

All this means is that Flash can now support an alternative from an FLV file (i.e. Flash video file) to another type of Movie codec (i.e. h.264). This has nothing to do with actually playing a SWF file (Shockwave File) which all Flash sites contain. A Flash site contains the SWF file (where your menus, vector animations, artwork, etc. all live). Then, these SWF files can call up any number of "external" files, such as an FLV video, XML file, PHP, etc. and now of course, h.264 video file.

The main problem with Flash as far as the iPhone is concerned, is that Flash can be quite a bit of battery drain (regardless of any video a Flash file does or does not have). Files such as an h.264 video for example, is that these types of files grab a majority of there energy requirements and some video playback requirements from hardware, compared to a typical Flash file, which grabs most of its energy requirements from software and/or a video card. Until Adobe rewires a new type of Flash file that can grab its energy from hardware and not software/video card (something sort of like Flash Lite, which is used primarily for Mobile device interfaces) nothing is going to change this obstacle in getting Flash sites and games on the iPhone.

[clickmyface]

Originally Posted by TitoC

All this means is that Flash can now support an alternative from an FLV file (i.e. Flash video file) to another type of Movie codec (i.e. h.264). This has nothing to do with actually playing a SWF file (Shockwave File) which all Flash sites contain. A Flash site contains the SWF file (where your menus, vector animations, artwork, etc. all live). Then, these SWF files can call up any number of "external" files, such as an FLV video, XML file, PHP, etc. and now of course, h.264 video file.

The main problem with Flash as far as the iPhone is concerned, is that Flash can be quite a bit of battery drain (regardless of any video a Flash file does or does not have). Files such as an h.264 video for example, is that these types of files grab a majority of there energy requirements and some video playback requirements from hardware, compared to a typical Flash file, which grabs most of its energy requirements from software and/or a video card. Until Adobe rewires a new type of Flash file that can grab its energy from hardware and not software/video card (something sort of like Flash Lite, which is used primarily for Mobile device interfaces) nothing is going to change this obstacle in getting Flash sites and games on the iPhone.

Hey, thanks that was really good info. Whats confusing though is that they have the YouTube player on the phone/touch and we are able to browse and watch movies. But the actual youtube pages in safari cant display the videos. Whats the reasoning for that?

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by Marvin

Excellent news on the H264.

It's actually somewhat old news, Adobe announced it late August.

[reallynotnick]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

It's actually somewhat old news, Adobe announced it late August.

But it never came out with an official version with H.264 only betas until now.



I hope youtube makes the full switch over to H.264, FLV is just horrible, it really amazes me how CPU intensive it is for the crappy video quality it gives us. H.264 is better quality in a smaller file space and lighter on the CPU, really I can't see any downside to this.
Long live H.264!.... until H.265 comes out of course

[TitoC]

Originally Posted by clickmyface

Hey, thanks that was really good info. Whats confusing though is that they have the YouTube player on the phone/touch and we are able to browse and watch movies. But the actual youtube pages in safari cant display the videos. Whats the reasoning for that?

Here's the deal;

Videos on YouTube (at least for now) are actually encoded in 2 different formats: One being the traditional FLV format, and one being an h.264 format.

When YouTube detects that you are viewing a particular page via an iPhone, it will display the video (IF available) in the h.264 format. This automatically brings up the Quicktime video player in your iPhone, displaying the h.264 video file. If you are viewing the same web page via a traditional computer system (non-iPhone device), it will display the same video in the FLV format.

YouTube has stated that by next Summer or Fall, they hope to have ALL of their videos in the h.264 format. That is why some (or a lot, depending on which ones you want to see) YouTube videos can be viewed on an iPhone while some can not. So, according to YouTube, by next Summer or Fall, you should be able to see ALL YouTube videos on your iPhone.

Hope this answers your questions.

[anantksundaram]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

iPhone re-locked in Germany

T-Mobile can go back to selling Apple's iPhone exclusively and locked to its own service, a German court ruled Tuesday, reversing an injunction last month requiring the company to sell an unlocked version in Europe's biggest economy..

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

Predicted (check out the thread from when the first news of this was reported on AI). And predictable.

It will ultimately end up (and be resolved) in EU courts.

[TenoBell]

Interesting this thread is amazingly quiet. Few had anything to say about the German court reversing the decision. I think its a wise choice, leave it to the market to decide. Socialism can go too far.

[Kolchak]

Originally Posted by TitoC

When YouTube detects that you are viewing a particular page via an iPhone, it will display the video (IF available) in the h.264 format. This automatically brings up the Quicktime video player in your iPhone, displaying the h.264 video file. If you are viewing the same web page via a traditional computer system (non-iPhone device), it will display the same video in the FLV format.

YouTube has stated that by next Summer or Fall, they hope to have ALL of their videos in the h.264 format. That is why some (or a lot, depending on which ones you want to see) YouTube videos can be viewed on an iPhone while some can not. So, according to YouTube, by next Summer or Fall, you should be able to see ALL YouTube videos on your iPhone.

All good and well, but I want to know when I can watch the higher quality h.264 vids on my computer. Can't someone come up with a hack to fool YouTube into thinking my computer's actually an iPhone?

[anantksundaram]

Originally Posted by TenoBell

Interesting this thread is amazingly quiet. Few had anything to say about the German court reversing the decision. I think its a wise choice, leave it to the market to decide. Socialism can go too far.

Interesting indeed, but not surprising. There seems to be a disproportionate representation in all these forums (engadget.com is the worst in this regard) of people who just appear to viscerally dislike the iPhone, for whatever reason.