It’s been a very interesting two days, with both YouTube and Vimeo rolling out experimental HTML5 players. But the Vimeo announcement, which comes the same day as the Firefox 3.6 release, isn’t a panacea for advocates of open video. As with YouTube, the HTML5-delivered videos use the H.264 codec—so they won’t play natively in Firefox and other browsers that haven’t paid for permission to use the codec.
Unlike the HTML5 experiments at DailyMotion, which deliver Theora videos, these two experiments are using the industry standard H.264. Though great for the open web, and certainly threatening for makers of proprietary plug-ins, these developments give strength to H.264 as the plays-anywhere-on-any-device solution for the web. The upshot? As HTML5 and the tag become pervasive, the possibility of an even diverse video ecosystem emerges. As with images on the web, with support for .jpg, .png, and any other number of formats, the adoption of HTML5 draws us closer to a more multimedia-rich web, with unimaginable applications.
Well there are two main problems with this two experiments.
1. Hardcoded supported browsers and extensive using of JavaScript. I have browser which support video nativly, but both sites are wrongly talking that my browser is unsupported. Page like “Video for everybody” explain how to resolve this problem definietivly using simple code without javascript.
2. Lack of Ogg Theora support, even as alternative. As far as i know video tag can have multiple formats specified and browser will use this which is supported and if both, this which is better in some sense.
Neverthless move in good direction.