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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)."
... so Flash isn't completely dead for video on the web. I wonder if Hulu and Adobe are in cahoots?
that flash sucks and HTML5 is bestest way to stream video
It always seems like the websites that insist on all these extras suck compared to the smooth easy playback of sites like You tube. Some sites are just unwatchable (Frequent "Video Buffering", stream drops bypassing 5-10 mins going to the next commercial break), whereas I never have trouble with You tube.
And we're not on any rinky-dink connection either, We have business class internet service through Covad for our webservers.
Honesty in this case - admitting that "our customers" (plus their needs) and their users aren't the same thing...
One that hath name thou can not otter
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).
Say what now?
What 'single locked down channel' are we discussing here? There is presently more than Hulu alive on the web now, is there not? Please do clarify, dear submitter.
it must also secure the content
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason it won't happen. HTML5 is just too open for them. With Flash there are still various tricks to secure the stream (I believe the BBC iPlayer used to XOR it or something like that...)
"It's a lot of work, and we don't want to do it unless we have to." would have been more honest.
... handle reporting for our advertisers, ...
There's the real issue.
But what, pray tell, are the advertisers looking for? And what is it that HTML5 can't do that Flash can?
I mean, they interrupt the show with the ads so it's not like you can get around it easily, so what's the big deal?
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Speaking of content security and HTML5 doesn't have it _yet_, as an extension... Options are:
1) Real Networks architecture
2) Quicktime DRM (yes, it exists, media keys)
3) WMedia DRM
4) Silverlight DRM
They got options and yet, I don't think they are less hated or feasible (Real Networks bad image, quicktime being gigantic windows app) than Adobe Flash.
IMHO they will even code an Adobe Air dedicated application in the future, Air already got actual direct TCP/UDP connection capability in V2+. HTML5 advocates should really give an option for content security aka DRM, that is how real World works for now... Unfortunately that is.
As Apple is in perfect shape now, I would be questioning "Why on earth our own Quicktime, even with DRM since V5 not even considered as an option?"
Someone should really start asking these questions now, that great framework is really being wasted. They didn't even bother to ship Quicktime X for Windows. Before attacking other companies frameworks/players/plugins, he should check the shape and missed opportunities of Quicktime department in Apple.
I was having this conversation just yesterday. ABC was able to release a IPad app that played the same video they have on Hulu.. the Advertising looks the same.. it looks like they just made hulu play a different format for the IPad. This also brings up a point, why has Adobe not made a player for flash like Apple did with YouTube? it may launch the video in its own player. This would not help for Flash games or it may work the same.. I don't know I do know that Adobe would get more support from me if they created a real app and was denied than just crying about how Apple did not let them. and for Hulu, they have proven to me that they are not really interested in going outside of what they already offer, so its no real surprise that they have not made an app or worked on making the site more compatible with other devices. for me it matters little as Comcast is either filtering and giving less bandwidth to Hulu to make everything I watch pause 3 or 4 times during a show, and Verizon DSL.. Forget it .. not worth the bother
if its not the internet than I would go with Hulu can not keep up with streaming video.. but people on FIOS do not have the same issues. so I am sticking with its the fault of the internet provider.
I am of the opinion, That content providers talk about streaming media, but still do not see the market.
This proves once again that when the customers are advertisers the best solution is Flash. It will be some time before another technology becomes this ad friendly. As the article notes, HTML is great at delivering content, but not DRM or advertising.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Lets say HTML5 becomes the perfect tool to a point that even Adobe starts to depreciate their own stuff for it... What will be done about the needs of professional content creators? DRM? Anti-rip? Today's media logic says "There has to be some sort of inconvenience and responsibility creating thing in a media framework". For example, everyone knows DVD CSS is dead,easily cracked but it is still implemented on movies especially to create a situation that user has to run "illegal software" to rip the commercial DVD.
How do you implement DRM "openly"? Remember Real Networks CEO suggested Linux/BSD guys should really think about a DRM standard and everyone (rightfully) laughed at him? HTML5 now has the same issue, globally.
The proxies don't always work..
Can't we put them out of business? Or at least reduce their clout?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"and you could always write a better one."
Please show me a link to an RTMPE specification.
Reverse engineered ones are not allowed.
"Adobe's player is not great, but it works"
Depends on how you define "working". I define "working" as "can play H.264 video with at most a 50% CPU resource penalty compared to other implementations".
By this definition, it isn't working - a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom has no problem playing Hulu-resolution H.264 video smoothly. (Actually, thanks to rtmpdump, I have tested actual Hulu content), while a 2 GHz Athlon XP slideshows, and an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 + Nvidia 8800GT still has visible framerate stuttering on a regular basis.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
"We continue to monitor developments on HTML5, but as of now it doesn't yet meet all of our customers' needs."
In case you EVER wondered, unless you are an advertiser or owner of content, you are not the customer for Hulu.
The HTML5 spec authors would do well to read that hulu blog. If they really want HTML5 to win, they need to provide the support necessary so sites like hulu can do what they want to do.
Really hulu has made it very easy for them, giving them an explicit goal to shoot for.
It is not a standard, and no you can not write a better one or it would have been done.
Stop thinking you know what you're talking about. Until you come back with an IEEE or RFC# where it states that adobe is a standard your input in the matter is useless.
Please show me a link to an RTMPE specification.
Fail, and hard. That's an optional DRM tech (DRM is evil, etc.) which can be used with the Flash VM. You might as well say that Linux is closed because some Linux apps are closed source, or that HTML5 is closed because it's possible to obscure Javascript so much that reverse engineering is required to reimplement some Javascript-based utility.
I define "working" as "can play H.264 video with at most a 50% CPU resource penalty compared to other implementations". By this definition, it isn't working.
By defining Jesus as the appendix, Jesus is in (almost) all of us. Your definition is specious, and your conclusion requires published evidence.
while a 2 GHz Athlon XP slideshows, and an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 + Nvidia 8800GT still has visible framerate stuttering on a regular basis.
You have something broken with your setup. If it were that bad, no-one would actually use Hulu. To wag my little tail, 1.83GHz Intel C2D with a GMA950 running Hulu fine for years, and that's on OS X where Flash is known to be more sucky.
While people love to hate on Flash, it actually performs quite will for video on most systems. It can chat with the video card and use it to accelerate decoding. This is important for HD content because you start to discover that HD can hit even a modern dual core hard if there's no acceleration. Well Flash accelerates nicely on Windows, and is supposed to be getting the ability to do so on the Mac (not sure on the status, I don't have a Mac).
Now I'm sure HTML5 can have this done, but it has to be done in the browsers people use before it would be a real contender. Saying "Well it could in theory accelerate video," does you fuck-all good if the web browsers out there don't do it. The net effect would be people would find HTML5 video choppy and it would bog their system down whereas Flash wouldn't. They wouldn't care about the reasons, they'd just say "This sucks."
For that matter, all the dynamic HTML5 type stuff itself may need new browser architectures. An interesting test to look at it Microsoft's IE9 platform preview (http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/). They've got a whole bunch of different demos of various types. Now the interesting thing is to look at them in Firefox, and in the IE9 preview. IE9 kills it speed wise, and function wise. Most things run twice as fast or more, and things like text scaling is smooth and fluid as you'd see in Flash, not jumpy.
So to truly have a good HTML5 experience, we may need a new generation of browser that makes good use of the video card to accelerate everything. As far as I know, there's nothing that does that right now, since IE9 is just a preview (and not really usable as a general web browser) and none of the rest are doing it. We may have to wait awhile before browsers can perform up to the level people would want with HTML5.
and no you can not write a better one or it would have been done.
Obvious fallacy. 2/10.
Until you come back with an IEEE or RFC# where it states that adobe is a standard
Until you can come back with a Commandment from God stating that the IEEE or IETF approval are necessary and sufficient before something is labelled "standard", etc etc.
To add my anecdotal evidence: dual core (before Core 2 came out) Intel laptop with an ATI X1400 mobile machine works just fine with Hulu ... if using Windows anyways. Haven't tried Linux on that one lately, but last time I did, drivers + flash player made stuttery video.
I also have a Q6600 + nVidia 8800 setup and it runs completely smoothly, no problems whatsoever.
I see tearing on a Q8300 running linux. Flash videos that pan quickly tear even on windows.
This way everyone wins. Hulu doesn't have to redesign their whole site, and iUsers access the site via an app instead of a website so Steve Jobs gets to maintain his control over his platform. One potential problem would arise if any Hulu content said anything bad about Apple. Remember that apps have been kicked off for mentioning competitors, so surely content that criticized Apple would result in an app getting rejected?
While we're on the subject of locked down channels and Hulu, one thing they could certainly get away with charging a subscription for is a mobile version of Hulu. I'm hardly ever willing to pay a subscription fee for anything, but I would gladly pay it to watch Hulu on my phone. (I can already do this with YouTube for free but there's nothing I really want to watch on there)
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Would someone like to disabuse them of the belief that you can hand locked content and content keys to the consumers without giving them the unlocked content? (My reverse engineering of flash apps just isn't up to snuff). Then there would only be legitimate technical considerations like injecting advertising streams and site controlled caching before moving away from flash.
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
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)."
You misspelled "torrents"
The rest of us will wonder what took you so long
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
How about the iPhone uses Sliverlight!!
Wait.. something there seems off a bit.
We were able to see right through it, sure, but from TFS:
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.
Unless that's a particularly bad quote, they're actually lying about HTML5, or at least about continuing to monitor it. An HTML5-based player can indeed handle reporting for your advertisers and use a high-performance codec (or really, whatever codec you want). Communicating back to the server is certainly possible. The only thing that's not reasonable is switching bitrates on-the-fly and implementing any sort of DRM.
Switching bitrates may be a legitimate concern. DRM is legitimate insofar as it's not up to Hulu -- they have to implement DRM because it's what their "customers" want. Everything else is pure unadulterated FUD, so no, Hulu gets no credit for it -- they were trying to give the impression that HTML5 is missing tons of stuff they need (including DRM), when really, all that's missing is DRM and switching bitrates mid-stream.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
open
Have they actually opened the spec to the point where third-party players are feasible? Last I checked, the spec was open for creating content, but not playing it.
Adobe's player is not great, but it works
No, it really doesn't.
you could always write a better one.
That's not terribly relevant.
First, Gnash has been trying for awhile, and hasn't been very successful. That could just be that Gnash sucks, it could just be that everyone already has Flash, and it could be that everyone's focused on HTML5. But it could also be because it's a hard spec to implement, and not a good choice. Compare OOXML and ODF -- both of those are at least approved by standards bodies, but they're not equally easy to implement.
Also, the DRM'd stuff is not and never has been open, so I can't duplicate that -- and Hulu is using that. So either you're wrong about Flash being open, or you're offtopic, take your pick.
The canvas element is a nowhere-fully-implemented
"Full" or not, it has multiple working, competing implementations, and many cross-browser demos on top of it.
ostensibly an "open standard" but really nothing more than Apple's troll
Now why would Chrome, Firefox, even IE participate in something that's merely "Apple's troll"? Any credibility you had till this point is pretty much gone.
to squeeze Flash out so anything worth using on their new legion of devices will have to be written using yet more proprietary Cocoa.
Well, that or using the entirely open HTML5. See how that works?
And why the hell would Apple care what's a standard or not? They can implement whatever they want on their devices, and ban whatever they want. If Flash didn't suck, there's not much stopping them from allowing it in the browser for video, but banning it as an app development tool and forcing everyone to use Cocoa anyway.
If you're seriously going to say you think Apple is trying to force crappy Flash game developers to become crappy iPhone game developers... really? You don't see them becoming crappy HTML5 game developers instead?
Neither Flash nor canvas are in the spirit of HTML, in that they basically provide a blank sheet outside the DOM.
So does <img>. Besides, what does canvas have to do with this? This would be about <video> vs Flash, and <video> is even more just another kind of <img>.
If you believe that modular plug-ins fit for purpose are good, Flash is a reasonable approach...
And no one is stopping you from implementing HTML5 as a set of plug-ins, or implementing a truly modular browser where image tags are only supported by an optional extension.
In the mean time, Flash is far from modular. It's a single monolithic plugin, a giant binary blob which also happens to be the single biggest attack vector, and it handles everything from application development (why the FUCK is the IRS using Flash for my taxes?) to streaming video to simple font embedding to animated ads to games to, lately, full 3D. Indeed, Adobe has gone the other direction, if anything -- Adobe AIR includes a WebKit engine, so that particular brand of Flash has sucked all of HTML into it.
If you actually like HTML, use SVG and build on that standard.
I don't particularly disagree, but again, WTF does this have to do with Hulu? How do I play a video in SVG?
Since you seem to have confused HTML5 with <canvas>, the same way most people confuse HTML5 with <video>... While you're at it, how do I get local SQL storage in SVG? How about offline web app support? Seamless drag-and-drop? How about a simple, efficient motion blur effect?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
AFAIK, Hulu has never ever promised anyone anywhere an app of any kind. There have been rumors that an app is in the works, and is "just a few months away," but these speculative reports (released every few months) are the only thing I've seen. So, if by "hulu app for iPhone and iPad" they mean "rumors of a hulu app for iPhone and iPad," then they're totally successful...
Well, what happens when you tell your customers not to bother? In my experience, unless you deal with self producing artist or a really modern producer who really knows about current trends, they said "they better struggle so we can keep the real pros responsible".
These guys are very powerful in video World and basically, whatever they don't want doesn't take off. If they see HTML5 as something they can't easily advertise on or protect (!), it doesn't take off. You know the lame things Apple does at their Quicktime Trailers page. That is the company who will truly support HTML5, down to their mighty popular trailers page right?
Quicktime does have DRM, it is just Apple, knowing the human nature, named it differently. It is "Media Keys". It exists but of course, I didn't have a mad idea like using Quicktime DRM solution in production environment. iTunes DRM is actually built on it, not sure if it is something like "V2.0" or pure implementation.
Unlike Apple, GPU access (to the point of video decoding) is something existing since Windows XP on Microsoftland, they could use the time frame to ship a GPU decoder enabled Quicktime X for Windows, to shut up all "Quicktime for Windows is bad" trolls once and forever.
Even Adobe managed to code a GPU accelerated Flash plugin :) Imagine...
The reason I am mad to Quicktime department at Apple is: I know what kind of a powerful platform it is, it is wasted, plain and simple.
Have they actually opened the spec to the point where third-party players are feasible?
Yes. A lot of your argument is based on making a random assumption and then arguing on the basis that the assumption is true, and this is your first instance.
That could just be that Gnash sucks, it could just be that everyone already has Flash, and it could be that everyone's focused on HTML5. But it could also be because it's a hard spec to implement
Second instance.
"Full" or not, it has multiple working, competing implementations, and many cross-browser demos on top of it.
There are half a dozen working, competing, incomplete implementations of Flash, and many fully fledged production cross-browser apps on top of it.
Now why would Chrome, Firefox, even IE participate in something that's merely "Apple's troll"? Any credibility you had till this point is pretty much gone.
In brief, because they're web browsers, and their remit is to implement W3C's HTML spec, not to write it. Other motives include Google's dream of holding all your data and serving everything via Javascript. MS, as usual, is just paying lip service in the hope of preserving browser marketshare.
Well, that or using the entirely open HTML5. See how that works?
No, not at all. I don't see lots of iApps being written in the "entirely open HTML5", and I don't see Apple showing any sign of wanting iApps to be written in the "entirely open HTML5". Apple aren't stupid, and they're not about to promote a store full of software which can run on any competing platform.
So does img.
And years 4 to 9 of the web were awash with huge imagemaps which everyone hated and which were soon replaced with smarter HTML as people accepted that an img was for an image, not for intelligence. Canvas is just a return to the bad old days.
Besides, what does canvas have to do with this? This would be about video vs Flash, and video is even more just another kind of img.
video is a not entirely insane tag, but it appears in HTML5 with the baggage of debates about video formats and canvas and other things which no-one's going to implement fully and uniformly.
In the mean time, Flash is far from modular.
It's as modular as you pretend HTML can be, i.e. you could make a non-conforming implementation leaving out as many features as you want.
also happens to be the single biggest attack vector
Bullcrap. The browsers themselves are the single biggest attack vectors, and more complexity in basic HTML is inviting more attack vectors. The greatest problem is the fundamentally broken design of HTML-as-app-delivery which allows so many vulnerabilities from sneakily malformed inputs/uploads to XSS attacks to multiple opportunities for information disclosure, etc.
[SVG] WTF does this have to do with Hulu?
Maybe Hulu can see that the painful bloat of HTML5, which won't be fully or even mostly implemented by major browsers, isn't worth considering - even if there's one or two features they could try employing.
While you're at it, how do I get local SQL storage in SVG?
Suddenly, a strawman.
How about a simple, efficient motion blur effect?
Argh. I wish I could go back to TBL in 1994 and say, "You know what this simple, effective mark-up language is missing? A built-in simple, efficient motion blur effect."
A lot of your argument is based on making a random assumption
I don't think it's random or unprecedented. Moreover, you haven't demonstrated it to be false -- it may be difficult to implement. HTML5 evidently is not.
You've also outright ignored several important points I made:
Have they actually opened the spec to the point where third-party players are feasible? Last I checked, the spec was open for creating content, but not playing it....the DRM'd stuff is not and never has been open, so I can't duplicate that -- and Hulu is using that. So either you're wrong about Flash being open, or you're offtopic, take your pick.
You didn't answer either of those points. You handwaved about third-party players existing, but that doesn't tell me whether or not they're allowed to read the specs yet -- again, the specs were open to third-party content creation tools for awhile, but not players, for some perverse reason.
On to your arguments...
There are half a dozen working, competing, incomplete implementations of Flash, and many fully fledged production cross-browser apps on top of it.
Citation needed.
In brief, because they're web browsers, and their remit is to implement W3C's HTML spec, not to write it. Other motives include Google's dream of holding all your data and serving everything via Javascript....
While true, it's still entirely up to a browser to simply refuse to implement a spec. In particular:
MS, as usual, is just paying lip service in the hope of preserving browser marketshare.
That raises the question of why they would implement the video tag, but not canvas?
The point here is that there are other players than Apple -- other contributors to the spec than Apple -- and more to HTML5 than video. Your claim that this is just because Apple doesn't like Flash is wrong on many levels.
No, not at all. I don't see lots of iApps being written in the "entirely open HTML5",
Mostly because then they're not iApps anymore. Then they're just web apps, which happen to work on Apple devices, but also work in any decent browser.
So how would you know?
And years 4 to 9 of the web were awash with huge imagemaps which everyone hated and which were soon replaced with smarter HTML as people accepted that an img was for an image, not for intelligence.
What? No, people still do things with images, though not to that extent. We still have mouseovers, at the very least. Images are used in place of buttons for interaction, and they're used as indicators and such all over the place. We've even got tricks with "sprite maps", where a single image file is manipulated through CSS to appear as multiple tiny icons as needed throughout the page.
More relevantly, you talk about "smarter HTML" -- I asked how an effect which is possible today with Canvas could be duplicated with SVG, and your response was to denigrate the effect. Apparently, smarter HTML, or smarter SVG, isn't really possible at this point.
video is a not entirely insane tag, but it appears in HTML5
That's like refusing to use HTML because it once contained the blink tag.
It's as modular as you pretend HTML can be, i.e. you could make a non-conforming implementation leaving out as many features as you want.
What no one has done yet is to create a competing, conforming implementation. That's the prerequisite -- leaving shit out isn't modularity. Modularity is being able to add and remove features at will, and for that to work, you need to have all the features at some point.
Bullcrap. The browsers themselves are the single biggest attack vectors,
The numbers disagree. Including the browser, most atta
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Me too, but I get a different error message: Sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed from within the United States.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Moreover, you haven't demonstrated it to be false -- it may be difficult to implement. HTML5 evidently is not.
It is not necessary to prove any random assertion false in order for it to not be true. As you've said, there's more interest in implementing W3C specs than Adobe specs. Still, HTML5 has 0 complete implementations, and Flash has 1.
but that doesn't tell me whether or not they're allowed to read the specs yet
Oh dear; I was hoping that you'd take the hint and look it up. Effective May 1, 2008, Adobe removed the entire licensing agreement from the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications. These licensing restrictions had meant that no one could build software that would "play" SWF content.
[existence of non-Adobe incomplete Flash implementations] Citation needed.
You are lazy. I'll give you three which take about 15 seconds to find on the web, and you can do the job of finding three more (hint: I could find 5 with a cursory search, and the 6th is fairly obscure; I'd already heard of 5). The most well-known incomplete implementation is gnash. Scaleform is a commercial implementation with hardware acceleration. Swfdec is a fairly amateur implementation which has been mostly abandoned.
It actually looks like they just care about DRM, and would use HTML5 if it had the appropriate features.
It looks like good-enough DRM on a platform which actually exists and is successfully in production is one of the things they care about, yes.
Otherwise, your rant here makes no sense in light of the native iPhone client they have planned.
Is that an HTML5-based iPhone client? If not, what's your point?
For example, contrary to your claim, HTML5 does seem mostly implemented by the browsers I'm using. What's missing?
You really are lazy.
I never said that you claimed SVG supports local SQL storage
You're making arguments in response to the strawman argument that "SVG is a suitable replacement for HTML5". I was arguing for SVG in the context of canvas, it was obvious that I was arguing for SVG in the context of canvas, and you were being deliberately obtuse because it felt good to you to so boldly tear down an argument which hadn't been made.
To fake it on top of SVG (or HTML), you'd have to create separate elements behind the element that's moving, and be careful to disable all events on those so they can't be interacted with, and remove them when you're done
If only you could group elements in SVG. If only there were a generic way to add filters in SVG, and that could be used, say, to produce motion blur. The problem with SVG is that you have to read the spec instead of canvas where everyone can be lazy and reimplement his own way.
You can abuse anything, so the fact that a tool can be abused is no reason to avoid it. (I doubt I'd like an entire website in Canvas much better than an entire website in Flash.)
The whole point here being that canvas and most of its HTML5 friends are no better in principle than Flash, and (currently) are worse in practice.
I'm done with this thread. I appreciate that you're at least responding, but your lack of effort at researching most basic points is too frustrating. Thanks.
Not "unsolved". "Unsolvable". The whole thought process behind DRM is that the customer is your adversary. At that point you're already fucked.
HAND.