New York Times and Time Magazine Stream HTML5 Video for iPad | Hacker News Reader

New York Times and Time Magazine Stream HTML5 Video for iPad

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7 pointsg0atbutt14 comments

This is coming via brightcove, a company that handles video for some pretty big clients (AOL, Fox, GM, A&E). Whatever it takes to get us off flash I'm all for.

"Apple has single handily convinced the industry to move away from a proprietary solution (flash) to an open standard."

Really.

Single handily.

Interesting.

I would say so. Think about where consumer adoption was before it was announced that the iPad wouldn't have flash. Everyone was scrambling to get Flash ported to their mobile platform (Android, WebOS, BB).

Apple was able to draw a line in the sand and said "Web standards, or nothing", and the industry listened. There is not a major media company that isn't thinking about how to reach iPad/mobile users, and web standards are now the best way to do it.

" ... and the industry listened. "

And there just happened to be this HTML5 thing that, among others goals, sought to replace proprietary video with something else. Without that, what would brightcove be streaming? Quicktime? Would they be updating their infrastructure solely to support Apple gadgets?

Apple is but one player in the drive to oust Flash.

"singlehandedly" is giving us way too much credit, but we did help a lot with the design of the spec for the HTML5 video element, shipped the first implementation in any browser, and gave a lot of early feedback on the spec.

OK, but bottom line is, "singlehandedly" is the wrong description.

Who are the other players?

No.. They didn't.. For starters, Steve Jobs didn't have anything to do with the HTML5 tags, it was introduced by consumer demand. However, it seems he is trying to take credit for its introduction. Every non-Apple geek wanted the change anyway (but sure, despite the fact I don't use Apple equipment anymore, my feedback to Google "was inspired by Apple" obviously).

Everyone knows that there are still no good tools to replace Flash's development tools, and sites which used flash before, are unlikely to switch only because of the iPhone or iPad (the iPad isn't out yet and the iPhone only has a tiny marketshare). Furthermore, FLASH DOES MORE THAN VIDEO! I am sick of every Pro-Apple article pretending as though video is its only purpose.

"iPhone only has a tiny marketshare" - iPhone dominates mobile web content at north of 40%. If you have mobile content, you have no choice but to support the iPhone. When the iPad is released, content providers have no choice but to support the iPad.

I'm sure Flash does more than video, but I've been running (on Windows XP/Firefox) FlashBlock for the last four months, and I've never seen anything but Video and SlideShows when I've clicked on the "F". I'm guessing there is an entire game ecology that I've never tripped across, but, well, the iPhone OS isn't particularly lacking in that area... :-)

"Everyone was scrambling to get Flash ported to their mobile platform (Android, WebOS, BB)."

And now that's stopped?

BTW, "scrambling" is a bogus description. My G1 has no flash support. Google didn't didn't seem terribly concerned with shipping without it, though if and when it becomes available it will get added. It's not as though all the other mobile players have been treating Flash as the Ur media format. Mostly it's been "take it or leave it."

Think of Apple as the catalyst. They may not be supplying the reagents to this reaction - That would be the Consumers, Publishers, and HTML 5 Technology providers (Browser Vendors - which I guess includes Apple's Safari) and Standards Bodies like W3C - but, it's Apple's refusal to put Flash on the insanely hyped, and potentially (probably?) popular iPad that shook up everyone (and I mean everyone - there is not a _single_ major content publisher that isn't reviewing their iPad strategy right now).

"Single Handily" is hyperbole, but it isn't incorrect to say that Apple _greatly_ accelerated the adoption of the open standards that are going to supplement Flash.

Like "open source", "open standard" has a specific definition which includes being royalty free. So while HTML5 is an open standard, H.264 is just a standard.

I think "single handed" is potentially a little far fetched.

But the hype around the iPad is certainly a huge trigger.

Automatic device detection interests me - what does that mean?

Is that: older browsers with no HTML5 (or ones with no H.264) support will get the Flash version or iPad/iPhone will get HTML5 and everything else Flash?

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