YouTube and Vimeo get HTML5 video

John Brownlee ()

YouTube and Vimeo get HTML5 videoApple doesn’t seem likely to introduce Flash to the iPhone or iPod Touch anytime soon, and you can take it pretty much as read that the Apple Tablet will have the same limitation. That’s a pain for those who want to play Flash games (and, in fact, its the possible dilution of App Store sales numbers that is making Apple so reticent to incorporate Flash), but it also means that sites that use Flash to serve up video are inaccessible.

Given how strongly focused on video media the Tablet looks like it’s going to be, the majority of online video sites may simply not be ready for Apple’s newest product. But a solution is in sight: the HTML5 standard will actually serve streaming video without installing Adobe Flash on compatible browsers, including good old Safari.

Even better? Both YouTube and Vimeo have rolled out opt in, beta versions of their HTML5 video players, and they work excellently on Safari in the iPhone or iPod Touch.

You can also use the HTML5 players in desktop Safari and Chrome. Theoretically, they should also work in Firefox, but Mozilla has been pressing for HTML5 to abandon H.264 compression for the free and open Ogg Vorbis Theora standard… which just isn’t going to happen.

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But I digress. Vimeo and Youtube’s move is a great first step towards an Internet without Flash. If more streaming video sites follow suit — and I think they will, since HTML5’s video seems a lot speedier than Flash — this is going to break streaming video on the iPhone wide open… whether AT&T is ready for it or not.

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About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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  • firesign3000

    The sooner Flash is put to death the better.

  • Kallt

    I wonder, if websites like YouTube and Vimeo push H.264 instead of Ogg Theora, wouldn’t that be very harmful to Mozilla and Opera? They already stated that H.264 won’t be an option for their browsers, as there are licensing costs bound to it. They could lose a lot of users with this.

    On the other hand, perhaps YouTube is making a bad decision. Not offering an alternative video format could force Firefox users to use Flash (which is what YouTube obviously tries to reduce) or another browser instead. The website could end up losing a lot of users, since Firefox is becoming the #1 browser and has a large supporting community.

    I love it that Flash is finally dropped, but not if it’s the beginning of a potential browser war. This reminds me of Blu Ray versus HD-DVD.

  • firesign3000

    @Kalit – I suspect that at some point Mozilla will have to change their stance if indeed this is how things go.

  • http://www.drtablet.com Dr. Tablet

    “Both YouTube and Vimeo have rolled out opt in, beta versions of their HTML5 video players, and they work excellently on Safari in the iPhone or iPod Touch.”

    Interesting timing, don’t you think? Two of the biggest online video sites roll out HTML5 video players that work great in mobile Safari… the week before Apple’s big event – potentially announcing a new tablet “media consumption” device.

    I’m not saying that Youtube or Vimeo has any inside knowledge about the tablet – but I think they’re putting their HTML5 cards on the table in preparation for the arrival of a potentially “Flash-less” tablet.

  • Mattzook

    Maybe Microsoft will soon buy out the morbid and faltering Adobe.