Media Player

Adobe Media Player not only rivals Apple's Quicktime and Microsoft's Windows Media Player, but also provides on-demand video content such as episodes of 'CSI: Miami' and 'CSI: New York', along with other feature programming and music videos.

Based on Adobe's Flash technology, Adobe Media Player contains both content creation and playback components, and is available for Windows and Mac. The overall look and design is sleek, uncluttered and easy to use. As soon as you load Adobe Media Player the black interface features bright, bold images of the TV shows available.

The Adobe Media Player home screen is split into two sections. The left hand side covers your video preferences, including favourite shows and any files imported from your PC's hard drive, while the right hand side provides access to the content currently available direct from Adobe.

To date, Adobe Media Player content is aimed at the US market, and we were able to pick from 384 TV shows from a number of American networks including MTV and CBS. Everything from comedy and animation to documentaries and music-related shows are available. Although no Australian content is available, some programmes will be familiar to an Australian audience, including MTV's 'Cribs' and 'The Hills' (semi-reality TV show about rich kids in LA), 'CSI New York' and the 'Rosie O'Donnell' chat show.

Currently, episodes can only be streamed online, although Adobe is planning to launch a subscription service allowing programmes to downloaded and viewed offline. Further details of this service have yet to be announced. Once you've chosen a programme, you are able to stream it in the Adobe Media Player either at actual size, fit-to-size or full screen, although in the later two options video-quality suffers. Adobe Media Player also offers stop, pause, fast forward and rewind options.

You can add different programmes to the My Favorites list and Adobe Media Player will automatically alert you when a new episode of these shows is available. Once programmes have been viewed, they disappear from the list. You can also select files from your PC's hard drive, and add them to the personal videos list.