Topic: HTML 5 video adoption is here... sort of

So no doubt the majority here are aware of HTML 5's video support being added to latest versions of Safari and Firefox, but it seems it's just the beginning of the incredible journey.

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/decoding-the-html-5-video-codec-debate.ars

This article strikes me as pretty bad news, I don't see how Mozilla can get themselves out of this, the solution added at the end of the article doesn't seem ideal to me, I feel Apple make a pretty good case here.

quote:

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"The HTML 5 video element has the potential to liberate streaming Internet video from plugin prison, but a debate over which codec to define in the standard is threatening to derail the effort."

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The problem was never plugins themselves, but how immensely plugins for Windows and Mac OS sucked. Plugins using mplayer, vlc, xine, etc., have supported syntax equivalently as simple as that used with <video> for ages. I also have trouble associating Apple with a party concerned about abuse of patents.

Yeah, I think the main bugbear here is for Flash, which although is certainly valuable for some use-cases, isn't ideal for video, and doesn't have equality in performance across platforms.

As horrible as Flash is, I was actually thinking of the Windows Media Player and Quicktime browser plugins, which have always been even worse, and that's saying something!