It occurs to me that this is probably much simpler to cache than a streaming protocol, which might be one of the reasons they've stuck with it. Bandwidth is usually more expensive than storage.BlackAura wrote:Oh yes... YouTube still uses HTTP progressive download, rather than any streaming protocol.
Anyway, I'm kind of curious as to when HTML5 will really start being fully supported in browsers. Bits and pieces of it are there now, but this seems like more of a prototype/preview of support than a full-blown standards-compliance effort (maybe because the text isn't finalized yet). It seems like HTML5+JavaScript+SVG is almost enough to make Flash truly obsolete. Flash does still have a few things over the standards-based stuff:
- Dynamic audio generation (AFAIK this can be done with small samples, but it's a hack involving data: URIs and I don't know if anyone's actually made it work reasonably well in practice)
- Guaranteed codec support (there is no standard codec for <video> because Free Software people didn't want a patented codec like H.264 and cell phone people didn't want a codec without COTS hardware decoders like Theora; similar reasons prevent a standard lossy codec for <audio>)
- Massive installed user base (HTML5 browsers will surely catch up, but it might take years)
- Mature content creation tools for the overall feature stack (audio+video+animation)