The new Flash Player beta version is ready to download on the Adobe Lab web pages: Flash Player 9 Update 3 Beta 2. Most important: The support of the video codec H.264 and the audio codec AAC. Both belong to the best codecs in quality and efficiency on the market. And both belong to the MPEG-4 standard. Jon Dahl on Rail Spikes provides more background information on codecs and their advantages. The Adobe developer Tinic Uro gives more details on the codec implementation.
Attention should be paid to the Adobe announcement especially against the background, that there is still no confirmation on a Flash Player for the Apple iPhone. Youtube, which encoded their videos only in a Flash-video format, now started to encode new videos also with H.264 to serve the attractive target group of iPhone (and Apple-TV) users.
Maybe the pleasant step of Adobe is also a first sign that the wish of a Flash Player for the iPhone is eventually coming true. This would be great news - especially for innovative GUI- and interaction concepts.

We can be anxious what the future will serve us