No HTML5 Hulu Anytime Soon

99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes "The Hulu website briefly commented the other day about why they would not be implementing HTML5 video for their service: 'We continue to monitor developments on HTML5, but as of now it doesn't yet meet all of our customers' needs. Our player doesn't just simply stream video, it must also secure the content, handle reporting for our advertisers, render the video using a high performance codec to ensure premium visual quality, communicate back with the server to determine how long to buffer and what bitrate to stream, and dozens of other things that aren't necessarily visible to the end user.' They plan to release a dedicated application for the iPad and iPhone instead, likely a paid subscription service. Perhaps this is a good sign for Web-based television, as it will move more users away from the single, locked down channel from the networks and to more diverse options less interested in extracting subscription fees (like YouTube)."

Comments

Re:OK ...

[eldavojohn]

Another case in point is determining how long to buffer and what bitrate to use (change dynamically). Does HTML5 video offer these options?

Aren't those things that are dependent on the codec and container that is used? Right now, depending on the format, I believe that HTML5 Video using Ogg Theora does provide variable bitrate.

I'm not sure where to address the buffering problem but you would think that it would be dependent on the user's latency and determined by the container or a combination of container and browser.

So what you asked would depend on the format used inside the HTML5 tag and if your browser supports that format yet.