Steve Jobs may not want Flash on the iPad, but thankfully, a company called RipCode does. As pointed out by Slashgear, the Texas based company has announced a new "clientless Flash video codec" that will allow Flash content to be streamed on Apple"s iPad. This would include sites like Hulu and YouTube, assuming the respective companies don"t find a way to block it.
According to RipCode"s press release, the TransAct Transcoder V6, as it"s being called, captures the iPad"s request for Flash content and converts it into a special format that the device accepts and plays. This is all done without a local client or user intervention.
"RipCode"s Transactional Transcoding platform enables an alternate and immediate solution to this issue, opening up video content to users without requiring the content hoster to move to HTML5 or pre-transcode entire video libraries from Flash to an iPad-accepted container format. By transcoding the content "in the cloud", it is essentially analogous to a network-based Flash to MP4 or MPEG-TS video adaption layer."
It will be interesting to see how AT&T reacts to this news. After all, they"re the ones who will be providing unlimited 3G coverage for the iPad. From the press release alone, it"s unclear how a user will be able to enable this on his or her specific device. This question will likely be answered when RipCode shows off the technology at NAB 2010 this week in Las Vegas.