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- The Race to Rich-Media Domination
- Adobe Steps into the Interactive Arena
- Adobe's Mission: One Application for Print and Interactivity
- Adobe Redefines the Office Workflow
- Page-Based vs. Timeline Formats
- The Cost of Playback
- Adobe Introduces Reader 5.1
- Multimedia Moves to the Web Page
- Acrobat's Best Friend: Adobe InDesign
- InDesign Gets Interactive
- A Polarized New-Media Industry
- Rich-Media PDF and Disruptive Technologies
- Building a Team That Includes Everyone
- Reader 8 (PDF 1.7)
- Commenting and Forms
- Attached Files
- Viewing Interactive 3D Rich Media
- Adobe and Macromedia
This chapter is from the book
The Cost of Playback
Another reason for the slow adoption of rich-media PDF was the financial decision to charge for the enhanced rich-media playback capabilities that were possible only from Acrobat. Even though you could link audio and video to a PDF file since version 1.1 (Acrobat 2), the home user needed to own the full version of Acrobat 2 to play the rich media! If you put an interactive PDF with a linked video on a CD and sent it to a customer, the user would need Acrobat installed to play it; Reader would not play the video! The additional fee for video playback was becoming a major complaint from developers.