Le Tour de Adobe

Well, it’s that time of the year again, the Tour de France has once again begun in ernest. Because of the time difference here in Australia, i’d usually be sitting in front of the telly growing dark eyes for the hours of 11 to 3 watching the coverage live.

↑ Screenshots from Adobe Tour de France application

This year, things arent so different – except that instead of sitting in front of the TV, im lying in the comfort of my bed streaming the whole thing live via the local tour broadcaster here in OZ, SBS.

For other aussies out there : http://tdf.sbs.com.au/tdf2009/web/flash/index.html

Interestingly though, the site is brought to you by Adobe. Apparently, they made the site for free, and are using it as a showcase of the Flash streaming video capabilities.

Well, for me the site is a winner, and the stream is excellent quality at great resolution. Im not sure how many people are streaming it like me so I dont know if the service will always remain this good – but for now, im a fan.

My only issue is that it took some hunting to actually find the URL for the site – I hit twitter to find it (just in time to see @lancearmstrong hit the track) because SBS handy advertised the URL…, and that SBS downloads are not unmetered and so i’ll have to be careful not to abuse my download limits :)

Oh, and I wish I could kill the chat window… Adobe?