As of IE5.5/Win Microsoft also made the browser fully reliant on its ActiveX technology which relies on being called from the <OBJECT> tag. Windows users may need to download the latest version of DirectX (version 8.1 comes as standard with WinXP though):
The reason that the <OBJECT> tag is wrapped around the <EMBED> tag is so that we get full cross-browser and cross-platform support - if the browser supports <OBJECT> it will run the movie and ignore the <EMBED> and the other browsers will skip straight to <EMBED> information.
You should check the relevant information for the respective application for the exact code (as this is critically important).