Flash 10.1 beta 3 released, adds support for Intel GMA 500 and Broadcom Crystal HD chips (Update: 1080p Flash on a netbook!)
By Nilay Patel 
posted February 24th 2010 4:25PM
posted February 24th 2010 4:25PM
Rejoice, owners of netbooks with Intel GMA 500 graphics: Flash Player 10.1 Beta 3 is here, complete with hardware video acceleration for your machines. That should make Hulu and YouTube HD usable on machines like the Sony VAIO P and VAIO X, the Nokia Booklet 3G, and the previous-generation Dell Mini 10. The new build also bring support for the Broadcom Crystal HD accelerator found in Pine Trail Atom machines like the newest Dell Mini 10 and HP Mini 210 -- support we found sorely lacking when we reviewed the Dell. We just tried it out on our review HP Mini 210 and it managed 720p YouTube just fine, although 1080p was a no-go -- we're waiting on some updated Broadcom drivers though, so don't take that as gospel quite yet. We'll have much more on that in our full Mini 210 review; for now you should all get downloading and let us know how it's going in comments.Update: Success! We updated the Broadcom drivers on our Dell Mini 10 and downloaded the fresh Flash 10.1 Beta 3, and as you can see in the video below 1080p YouTube HD content plays smoothly. It's almost everything we've ever dreamed of for our netbooks. We are still having issues with the HP Mini 210 which uses the older BCM70012 Crystal HD card, but will have an update on that in our full review soon.
@Taylor Yes Taylor YES! It is annoying, and as a dyed in the wool apple fan (had them since the beginning..) it seems a very short-sighted policy. If Flash runs badly in general it will die a death. As far as I can see it is going from strength to strength. I LIKE Flash content!
Bummer. The past beta was working fine for me, but this one crashes on install each time. (Win7 x64) Ah well, it's not like I noticed a difference anyways!
Anybody know if this will effect my Netbook? I have a "Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 3100 Series" in my Gateway LT 2104u? Currently I am not getting any 720p Youtube lovin here. Maybe I need to install a beta? Thanks fiolks...
@Kiteless
Nope
This is why I bought a HP Mini 311 with Nvidia ION. It's fast and looks good. and was only $300 on sale
@Murkurie I am looking to get a HP Mini 311, where did you find it for $300?
@mercnet
I found it at office depot for 70$ off. they gave me a extra discount for buying the open box one, imho was a great deal the battery had never been used, and the key board had no wear, and screen was slight dirty. I ordered 2gb of ram off newegg so it will have 3gb total and put win7 on it and it fly's
I installed this on my mdd powermac g4 and now it doesnt skip on youtube videos anymore. Atleast its something .
:)
I discovered the Flash 10.1 beta 3 release last night, and tried it out on a BCM70012 equipped Acer ao532h. Works ok now full screen 360p on Hulu, watchable but still drops frames on 480p full screen (but 480p in-browser is perfect). I have already update to the 3.1.8 Broadcom driver released a few days ago. Not perfect yet but now it looks attainable for the alpha release.
Not so good with my 1.3 gHz Atom z520 Acer ao751h with the GMA 500 (no Broadcom card). Unwatchable in browser or full screen at 480p; unwatchable 360p fullscreen. So GMA 500 support isn't quite there yet. Please note that I CAN watch full screen on HTML5 on the GMA 500 courtesy of youtube.com/html5 beta opt-in. I will try my z530 powered, 1.6 gHz MSI Wind U100 tonight - maybe the faster processor speed will work (also the MSI has lower rez screen than the Acer, which might make a difference).
But basically a great improvement with the Broadcom and nothing with the GMA 500. I think Adobe indicated GMA 500 support is lagging. That's a shame, since the GMA 500 is actually a good processor, better in some ways than the new GMA 4500.
@NorCal1953, that's weird. I can play 360p in browser and fullscreen with no stutter at all on my N900 which uses FP 9.4 atm (no acceleration whatsoever), and most of the time I can get away with 480p (which is the native resolution of N900). I find it hard to believe that ARM Cortex-A8 @ 600MHz can do a better job than Atom @ 1.3GHz.
Anyone been playing with the Flash betas? They just don't seem that much better to me. I'm using an ION based nettop.
I was hoping for an Android version.
Considering some fullscreen flash videos still manage to stutter on quadcore systems I honestly don't care that much about Flash for the time being.
@MikeZ, any quad-core will play 1080p in Flash, be it H.264 or the old On2 VP6. If it stutters, blame the developers of a particular player (yes, most of them are done by amateurs that have no idea how computers work, YT is a shiny example of a shitty player), don't blame the technology.
So what, 5 or 6 more years before this goes stable? Kind of like x86_64?
@mkhpalm
No.
@Taylor Yes Taylor
I'll believe it when I see it. By the standard development heart beat and change control of Adobe I'm half expecting HTML5 in wide deployment before flash 10.1 or "stable" x64 support. At some point you just have to stop talking about it and drop the code on the masses. Then be like most agile/efficient development teams and bug squash sub versions at a regular pace. Flash has never been the same since Macromedia was at the helm. Now we just have to live with bugs for years at a time sort of like the inane concepts that IE dev subscribe to. (on a rapidly changing industry)
@mkhpalm Thats BS. How is x64 unstable? I've used it since XP Pro, admittedly there were some issues there, but not many and only in early stages. Software was not widespread but you can of course use x86 softwares anyway. Vista saw it smooth put completely (bar standard Vista issues) and 7 is a dream.
@FORDY
No you haven't because the alpha 64bit flash binaries haven't even been out that long. (or to get technical, "at all" based on your description of the OS's that you're using) Right now we have "alpha" 64bit versions for linux.... Before that you could run a 32bit emulator in a 64bit browser like ndiswrapper or just a 32bit browser. But running a 32bit browser constrains you at about 2 gigs ram. (mathematically impossible to go above ~4)
Example of no "stable" 64bit flash:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/faq.html#flashplayer10FAQ_64-bit01
If only it was available on my iPhone... thats why my next phone is gonna be a HTC Android OS phone...
Thats a kick in the teeth. They won't support the desktop line of ati hd 38xx series graphics cards but they support intel gma 500? How lame! Especially since they have decided to support the 38xx laptop and integrated versions! I think the development team are getting lazy. (didn't someone say that before?)
@zondajag I don't know this series very well, does the HD38XX have H264 acceleration? If not, Flash can't magically support it. If it does, give them time, it's not final yet, you know.
@zondajag, don't blame Adobe, blame AMD/ATI, they won't join the OSP and release necessary info for utilizing their GPUs for 3rd party video accelerators. Here is the current list of OSP partners: http://www.openscreenproject.org/partners/current_partners.html . Once you see AMD/ATI there, you can expect their cards to be utilized as well. And while you are convincing them, please ask them to build a normal driver for Linux, or to release 3rd party hooks for their drivers as ATI usage under Linux is equally painful.
How about a link to the file? I find it funny that engadget finds it more important to link to 3 of their stories on the matter rather then the flash 10.1 beta 3 file. there is no link to the file while at the same time urging us to download it and take a look. Look i understand you would like to keep traffic on your site for the all important ad dollars but if you dont provide us with a link were simply going to go find it at a competitors site!
@darksynth Uhh, the link to Adobe's site is right there under SOURCE. Not that hard of a concept to actually look.
@darksynth As said, in true engadget style "hit up the source link".
Plus, I hardly think adobe.com/download is what you'd class as a competitor to engadget..
Crappy ipad no flash
Great update!
I hope you can find the solution to the BCM70012 not playing well. I have one too.
Thanks Engadget.
Regarding update:
but netbooks dont have full hd screens?
@mark29 I mention that in the video and Pine Trail doesn't have support for HDMI so it's obviously an issue to play the 1080p content on a 1080p display.
I just checked this out on my 17" MacBook Pro and I was using Beta 2 beforehand. Beta 3 has literally cut CPU usage in half for me. I'm using about 25% CPU total while playing a flash video now instead of 50%+!! Sure seems like they made some other Mac improvements to this release to me, perhaps without mentioning it. I didn't read the actual release notes, so I'm not sure what the reduction is from. I've always had "Hardware Acceleration" checked and flash has always choked my mac (as is normal, from what I've read).
@JoeDogInKC
Update: It appears that CPU is considerably reduced when not viewing Full Screen video, but when going to Full Screen, it goes back up to about 50% CPU :-(
On the previous beta it stayed about the same no matter if full screen or not.
uh, no love for my asus 1000he with intel 945, huh?
WILL THIS MAKE MY RESTAURANT CITY FASTER?
This would probably work on windows XP if Intel would fix their drivers for the GMA 500 for XP! Still crashes both IE and Firefox when trying starting to load a video on youtube. The device I have is a ClarionMIND which only has a 4GB SSD so windows 7 is not an option.
Still, it doesn't help the majority of netbooks users with GMA950.
and for droid :(
great news. does anyone know if the Intel GMA 945GSE is supported or if it will be ?
"We are still having issues with the HP Mini 210 which uses the older BCM70012 Crystal HD card, but will have an update on that in our full review soon."
I fail to understand what you're trying to imply here. Does the Dell Mini 10 use something OTHER THAN the BCM970012? I thought the BCM970015 wasn't even available yet? At least I can't find one online anywhere. Can someone please clue me in. Thank you.
@pcmike I was wondering the same exact thing.
12-15fps "really smooth" and "as you can see in the video below 1080p YouTube HD content plays smoothly"
You're jocking right ?
this video is not smooth at all, this is unwatchable !
I am personally waiting for hardware acceleration love for GMA 950 in OSX. Or even in XP!