News Section Logo NEWS - Return to news section

 

YouTube Ditches Flash, Now Defaults To HTML5

Posted by: , 23:37 AEDT, Sat January 31, 2015

Permanent Link     Add Comments
submit to reddit
YouTube starts transition to HTML5, abandoning Adobe Flash in the process
News story feature image
Image/Photo Credit: davidnicholson1978 @ Flickr, CC

Adobe's Flash player, once the dominant online video delivery tool, may soon be a thing of the past as Google this week announced that YouTube videos will now by default use HTML5 embedded videos.

YouTube's HTML5 video support has long been available, but users had to specifically choose to use the HTML5 player (unless they used Google's Chrome browser, which used the HTML5 player by default). This week, Google flicked the switch to make HTML5 videos the default choice for all users of IE 11, Safari 8 and beta versions of Firefox.

The benefit to using HTML5, as outlined by the official blog post announcing these changes, goes far beyond no longer needing a third-party plug-in like Flash. Adaptive Bitrate streaming, which dynamically adjusts the bitrate/picture quality based on network conditions, is one feature that HTML5 supports, but isn't available with Flash. According to YouTube "ABR has reduced buffering by more than 50 percent globally and as much as 80 percent on heavily-congested networks."

Other benefits include the support of the Google backed VP9 video codec, a more efficient codec that will allow 4K content delivery at vastly reduced bitrates.

For content providers, the support in HTML5 for Encrypted Media Extensions will allow DRM to be deployed for protected videos.

With YouTube ditching Flash, and Flash barely being supported on Apple platforms, and with Adobe ceasing development of Flash on Android in 2012, it seems Flash's days are truly numbered.

You can read about these and other changes in this official YouTube blog post.


Comments:

Related News:

News Icon Google Losing Next-Gen Codec Wars

posted by: Sean F, 21:59 AEST, Sat September 20, 2014

News Icon NPD: 40% of Homes To Have Streaming Media Player By 2017

posted by: Sean F, 16:16 AEDT, Sat January 31, 2015

News Icon Pansonic Unveils 4K Blu-ray Player at CES

posted by: Sean F, 16:16 AEDT, Wed January 7, 2015

News Icon Xbox One Getting Fully Capable Media Player, DLNA Support

posted by: Sean F, 22:26 AEST, Fri August 15, 2014

News Icon Murdoch Urges Old Media to Team up to 'Fight' Netflix, Amazon Dominance

posted by: Sean F, 21:34 AEDT, Fri October 31, 2014