At the National Association of Broadcasters 2007 conference being held in Las Vegas, Adobe Systems on April 16 introduced its Adobe Media Player, an Internet video platform that provides users with a way to distribute media as well as the ability to view content both online and offline.

Adobe Media player, a desktop application that uses Flash architecture, provides content publishers with new abilities to distribute, track and build businesses around their media assets while also providing viewers with the ability to download and view content offline.

The application provides content publishers with several video delivery options for online and offline playback including on-demand streaming, live streaming, progressive download and protected download-and-play.

Read more here about Adobe's "Creative" options.

"Adobe Flash has revolutionized the distribution of video content across the Internet and Adobe Media Player builds on this leadership position," Bruce Chizen, chief executive officer at Adobe, of San Jose, Calif., said in a company statement.

Adobe's Internet platform also enables users to find new shows while also including a Favorites feature that automatically downloads new episodes of the users' favorite TV shows or video podcasts using RSS (really simple syndication) standard. The application also allows users to comment on and share videos.

Adobe Media Player also provides content publishers with a standardized toolbox that allows them to set up an array of advertising formats such as text, animation or videos while also enabling content publishers to gather permission-based analytics data both online and offline, helping them to understand their audiences.

The new Internet platform from Adobe also provides users with a range of protection options including streaming encryption, content-integrity protection and identity-based protection.

Adobe Media player will also support other Adobe products including: Adobe Flash Player; Adobe CS3 Professional; Flash Media Server 2; server software for streaming media applications; Flash Lit mobile video playback technology; Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium for video, audio and motion graphics production; and Adobe Media encoder for compression and live streaming.

Adobe Media Player is planned to be available as a free beta download from the Adobe Web site later in 2007 with full availability expected by the end of the year.