I Miss Actual Video

Posted by Double Compile on Thursday, January 3. 2008

Remember the days where a video would be embedded in a web page? You could stream different kinds of actual video right to your favorite video plugin! I remember a choice between RealPlayer, Windows Media, and QuickTime.

Nowadays, it seems like you only have one choice: Flash. If, however, you're on a 64-bit operating system, you don't have a choice at all. Hey, Flash developers: read that line again. People who run 64-bit Linux, for example, do not have a Flash plugin. Don't blame Linux; it's Adobe's fault.

(Yes, I know there are hacks to emulate a 32-bit browser in a 64-bit operating system, but they're hacks and not solutions or acceptable in any way. Silence.)

Thank you, Google Video, for allowing me to download the videos as actual video, yes, an MPEG-4 file so I can watch it as video should be watched. Thank you, Stage6, for using actual video implicitly.  Meanwhile, I hope and pray that YouTube and its kin will stop wrapping perfectly good video with a Flash plugin that not all of its clients have or want.

Still don't understand?  Turn off your Flash plugin and try watching some Internet videos.  You'll end up spending a lot of time at Apple Movie Trailers.

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  • Rob
    2008-01-03 22:44 at 22:01 *What bugs me is that we know YouTube has the capability to serve H.264 video (that what the iPhone and Apple TV use) but for whatever reason they don't yet expose it to normal browsers.
    Reply

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