No HTML5 Hulu Anytime Soon 202
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)."
but Steve Jobs said (Score:4, Funny)
that flash sucks and HTML5 is bestest way to stream video
Before Flash, there was Quicktime (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:Before Flash, there was Quicktime (Score:4, Informative)
"Why on earth our own Quicktime, even with DRM since V5 not even considered as an option?"
QuickTime does not have DRM in any meaningful sense in this context. It can decode Apple's DRM'd media, but it does not provide a mechanism for other people to add DRM to their media that is then playable with QuickTime.
They didn't even bother to ship Quicktime X for Windows
They also don't ship it for OS X 10.5. It's a complete rewrite with hooks into the display subsystem for things like GPU acceleration and some superficial similarities to QuickTime. Porting it to Windows would be a lot of effort, for a negligible benefit.
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touches you at night^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
I've always wondered why people bother trying to use strike-throughs... they don't work on /.
At least they are honest... (Score:5, Insightful)
Honesty in this case - admitting that "our customers" (plus their needs) and their users aren't the same thing...
Re:At least they are honest... (Score:5, Insightful)
Honesty in this case - admitting that "our customers" (plus their needs) and their users aren't the same thing...
Indeed. For any sort of no-cost-to-view "broadcaster" the actual customers are the advertisers. The correct use of the term "consumer" describes those who watch the programs for free in exchange for having to view advertisements. Customers as individual entities and small groups have barganing power while consumers only matter in very large numbers and thus the "broadcaster" relates to them in more of a "take it or leave it" fashion by comparison. Customers can take their business elsewhere; consumers must go to particular providers (i.e. copyright holders of shows) if they want a particular product.
I have always regarded it as a form of Newspeak that a term indicative of diminished power and significance in the marketplace that comes from the jargon of one particular industry suddenly became applied to all customers in all economic transactions. One day about five to seven years ago it became in vogue to use "customer" and "consumer" interchangably as though they were the same thing. In conformance to the usual pattern, all the talking heads in the media suddenly adopted this usage and parroted each other as though they had always spoken this way. Always such Newspeak is in the form of using the degrading term to cover both cases and never in the form of using the elevating term to cover both cases.
Observe this pattern once and understand it and you will then see it everywhere.
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Customers can take their business elsewhere; consumers must go to particular providers (i.e. copyright holders of shows) if they want a particular product.
That was true until the time of significant broadband penetration and the rise of peer-to-peer sharing. Even if the "pirates" are an insignificant percentage of "consumers", they are the wolves at the door that are a force to keep the bastards in check somewhat.
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Customers can take their business elsewhere; consumers must go to particular providers (i.e. copyright holders of shows) if they want a particular product.
That was true until the time of significant broadband penetration and the rise of peer-to-peer sharing. Even if the "pirates" are an insignificant percentage of "consumers", they are the wolves at the door that are a force to keep the bastards in check somewhat.
That is a really interesting statement because I have a reason to agree with it and I have a reason to disagree with it. I will withhold judgment as to which one is more valid.
You're absolutely right about the effect of piracy. It's a check against excessive industry control. It's a bit like civil disobedience, except of course that those who engaged in old-fashioned civil disobedience fully expected to do the time for the crime. Pirates, by contrast, tend to rely on the statistical unlikelihood of a
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Wow. Talk about over-complicating things.
It's quite simple. Customers are the ones who pay. If you're not paying anything, you're not a customer.
I agree. That's exactly why I dispute the use of "consumer" to describe paying customers as though the terms were interchangable. This discussion where the distinction between customer and consumer is relevant is what brought up this subject.
This is overly complex for whom? You and your ability to handle a small amount of complexity? You and your unwillingness to see that these developments are not random but are in fact carefully engineered and deployed? Your inability to find the slightest fascina
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I wouldn't say they are really "carefully engineered and deployed" though. Probably just mostly a result of various societal dynamics; of common to many people advantageous effects (or at the least perceived as advantageous by them...and even if not that, then at least feeding on some beliefs & way of life they have)
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Summary says what? (Score:2)
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.
Re:Summary says what? (Score:5, Informative)
What 'single locked down channel' are we discussing here? There is presently more than Hulu alive on the web now, is there not?
Hulu is a joint venture of Fox, NBC, and ABC (now pulling out). The idea was they could maintain a singe front for providing mainstream TV, even as users moved way from cable and towards the internet for entertainment video. They were scared by YouTube and the like and wanted to make sure they could be the gatekeepers controlling the content as a cartel (like the RIAA has done with radio). That way they could extract more money in subscription fees going forward and at the same time reduce the threat of independent TV programming from being a more democratized source of content. Fox (for example) doesn't want to have to sell programs to users. They want to be able to sell subscriptions to all their content at once and so get paid just as much by people who think 90% of their content is crap.
Please do clarify, dear submitter.
Does that clarify my somewhat vague submission? I sort of assumed Slashdotters knew the history behind Hulu and the network's strategy with it.
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Thanks for the reply. It is as I assumed, then. You're making a huge generalization, and have left out at least one major television network, if not several, in your 'single' descriptor.
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Thanks for the reply. It is as I assumed, then. You're making a huge generalization
There is an attempt, somewhat stalled, to use Hulu to control Web TV to a large extend by consolidating the efforts of the major networks and allowing them to (probably illegally) collude on mainstream TV's display on the Web. That's not really a generalization as a rather ubiquitous analysis of the market by many many different news and industry groups.
ave left out at least one major television network, if not several, in your 'single' descriptor.
Hulu failed to get buy in from CBS because CBS had already launched a competitor and was getting better advertising revenue than they wanted to offer. The o
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Broadcast TV is essentially dead, outside of local news and programming. That limit seems arbitrary to me.
The description you're offering could be applied to any online business venture. Netflix is 'conspiring' to be the 'only' online movie rental outfit, too. Ford 'conspired' to be the only US-owned automaker to not receive a bailout. Etc, etc, etc.
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Broadcast TV is essentially dead, outside of local news and programming.
Largely true, but this does not lessen the power of four companies that control anywhere from 35-70% of TV viewership collectively. The big networks on Cable are also the big networks for Web viewing.
The description you're offering could be applied to any online business venture. Netflix is 'conspiring' to be the 'only' online movie rental outfit, too.
You don't seem to understand the meaning of the word "conspiring" which you misuse, or the word "collusion" which I use. You don't conspire or collude with yourself. It's prefectly legal for Netflix to compete with Blockbuster in the market and attempt to gain control of the market. It's illegal for Netflix to
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You're comparing Netflix/Blockbuster collusion when the apt comparison would be Netflix/Warner Brothers. Why?
Did you fail to notice the bruhaha over release dates and the new Netflix-branded versions of the DVD's?
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You're comparing Netflix/Blockbuster collusion when the apt comparison would be Netflix/Warner Brothers. Why?
Because that isn't an apt comparison. Fox, ABC, and NBC were colluding together and creating a joint venture called Hulu. Fox, NBC, and ABC are all competitors in the TV programming market. Similarly, Netflix and Blockbuster are competitors in the mail order movie rental business.
Did you fail to notice the bruhaha over release dates and the new Netflix-branded versions of the DVD's?
No, but I don't see how it is relevant. Netflix is a competitor in the TV programming business since they own Starz, but that's not really relevant to that particular deal. It's not collusion to come to an agreement with a provider
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Your use of the word is rather strict. The original intent was always for Hulu to be a joint venture. The current partners didn't 'collude to create' Hulu any more than Warner Brothers did to create Netflix.
The Hulu venture was announced in March 2007 with AOL, MSN, Facebook, and Yahoo! planned as "initial distribution partners."
Their CEO isn't from any of the TV networks, but from Amazon.
They are, first and foremost, a 'web 2.0' company. Their ownership is clearly secondary to their idea, rather than being central to it.
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Does that clarify my somewhat vague submission? I sort of assumed Slashdotters knew the history behind Hulu and the network's strategy with it.
At the last count, 49% of Slashdot readers are not resident in the USA. Given that Hulu doesn't work for these people, you shouldn't be surprised that a lot of people don't know more about Hulu other than 'it's some kind of streaming video thing that I can't use'.
speaking of locked down channels...mobile hulu? (Score:2)
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If they opened the catalog to contain lots of back-content (ala Netflix), I'd gladly pay for that as well.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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No, HTML5 is too open for their Customers (IE, the big TV companies that they partner with, and the Advertisers that PAY THEM). we are viewers, a product that Hulu sells their customers, the advertisers. If their customers are not interested in HTML5 (or are very much against it) then they should do what their customers want.
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Perhaps the clearest example yet of how copyfight literally holds back the progress of technology. The content industry quite literally wants to roll back the technological clock so they don't have to innovate their business models to keep up with the progress of technology. They'd rather
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I can get a copy of any video or stream put in anything adobe makes. Or ANY tool where at the end a wide base of viewers need to watch it.
Please explain to me why you can't secure content in HTML 5? any more or less 'secure' then it is now.
Its odd ABC did it (Score:2, Insightful)
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Because Apple won't allow it. Embedding an interpreter in an app that can load content dynamically is forbidden. For instance, Opera for the iPhone doesn't contain a JavaScript interpreter, the JavaScript is executed on Opera's servers and the end result is compressed and sent to the iPhone. Emulators face the same problem.
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They could play videos. Flash games, probably not. Videos, no problem.
There are lots of other video player apps for the iPhone.
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The ABC player is not HTML5, it's a native app.
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"Now that I think about it, since Adobe is insisting on how "open" FLash is because they've published the file format specs, it's conceivable that almost any dev could implement this."
Yeah, you'd think, hey? Except there seems to be only one third party Flash player in the wild and that one doesn't work so well.
I've heard the reason is that although Adobe has "published the file format specs" they did it in such a way that it's not exactly easy to implement a proper player. Kind of like MS did with their
Customers=advertisers (Score:5, Insightful)
Customer Needs (Score:2)
"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.
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I'm curious why people keep repeating this, presenting it as some sort of insightful comment, and also implying that us viewers are somehow being wronged or tricked by it.
Internet TV is no different from regular TV in that there's really only two established ways to make money with it. Either you go the HBO route and make people subscribe in order to view content, or you show the content for free and try to convince people to pay you for advertisements.
There's nothing new about this, and there's nothing sne
hulu has written an HTML5 mission statement (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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giving them an explicit goal to shoot for.
Come on now, what standards organization wants to have goals set for them? Seems to be most standards orgs like setting the goals themselves and forcing everyone else to comply.
(which I think is silly, but that does seem to be the way HTML5 standards are being written?)
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error in the article (Score:2)
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"
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Besides the fact that HTML5 isn't really finished yet nor implemented in the most used browsers (and not fully in others), they mentioned where HTML5 video fails too, like securing the content. Now slashdot crowd probably says this is a good thing, but theres not much to do if TV networks require it. Another case in point is determining how long to buffer and what bitrate to use (change dynamically). Does HTML5 video offer these options?
Re:OK ... (Score:4, Informative)
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Not to mention that the video quality on Hulu isn't worth ripping to start with. If you're going to pirate content might as well go to the Net where someone encoded the 1080p broadcast from cable.
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YOU can do everything they listed use HTML5.
The issue at this time is wide spread adoption of HTML 5... It could be their programmer don't know what they are doing..but I doubt that.
The demo I say did similar things, as well as a bunch of other really cool stuff.
I would be surprised if that's still their stance in 2 years.
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wait, HTML5 supports a DRM-enabled video codec?
you're not going to see premium content (ie movies, TV) on the web without it.
i used to do web video hosting for a major movie studio. their web distribution policy explicitly required all their content to be protected with DRM wherever it's shown on the web (iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, wherever).
a DRM-free web is a (movie|tv)-free web. at least for now.
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Does Hulu DRM? There are Hulu rippers out there, and while it's possible that they are extracting keys and decrypting the stream, more likely the DRM is just obscurity.
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yes RTMPE is not 100% secure, but neither are banks. but that doesn't mean you just leave your cash in a pile on the sidewalk outside your house.
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it may technically be obscurity, but it's an obscurity that's backed by legislation and the courts. and that's enough to satisfy the studios.
without DRM (however effective it is), there's no difference between downloading a web page and downloading an unprotected version of their content. IANAL, but i'm pretty sure that's not an actionable position.
Performance is another issue (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Performance is another issue (Score:5, Informative)
Flash is a horrible dog. It's only VERY, VERY recently started performing well on Windows, because they gave up decoding video, and handed it off to the OS, which can accelerate it via the videocard. For fuck's sake, Flash didn't even do the most basic hardware overlay until maybe a year ago, available in the mid 90s on damn near every video card, and standalone video player.
And while Flash may have gotten lucky on Windows, no such luck on other platforms. Flash on Linux is as big of a dog now as it ever was. Jumpy, flickery, tearing mess. And don't claim they can't do better, VADPU support on Linux has been in MPlayer for many months. Besides, I shouldn't need hardware acceleration just so stupid 480kbps 400x300 Hulu videos don't bring my 2GHz+ CPU to a grinding halt...
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Flash has been working just fine on the Mac for like 15 years now.
Do you work for Adobe? Flash for Mac (and every non-Windows platform) is absolutely horrible and that's hardly a secret.
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If TV networks require it, we'll happily ignore them until their ears bleed. It's not like there aren't other means to watch video online, most of which do not entail draconian DRM.
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Does HTML5 video offer these options?
I'll bet it's possible with Javascript/AJAX... but there's still the fact that such code runs unsecured in the browser and can be modified in any way by anybody. That's not very good DRM. Flash is definitely better (from the content-producers' perspective) than Flash.
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The video tag is just that, a video tag. HTML5 however, happens to contain, wait for it..., JAVASCRIPT, which could quite easily be used to download a file of a given size, time how long it took, and then dynamically insert the VIDEO element into the page, based on the previously estimated bandwidth.
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This works well until the connection speeds decrease or increase based on usage of other connected clients or whatever might be going on within the users system in the background.
Hulu can currently switch streams at any point in the video to account for that...without having to *add* to the bandwidth usage by adding uploads/downloads just to test speed.
Re:OK ... (Score:4, Informative)
That's not the right kind of "variable bit rate". The kind of VBR you're describing is merely varying the bit rate within a stream for compression efficiency. Hulu dynamically switches between streams at different bit rates, depending on the speed of your connection.
Re:OK ... (Score:5, Informative)
You don't understand. By variable bitrate, they mean changing the bitrate on a per-viewer basis. So, if someone has a particularly bad connection, it gives them a lower quality picture so that they can keep up. And if they're connection improves (they turn off their torrents, for example) then the bitrate they are being provided would improve.
As far as I know, the object in HTML5 does not allow swapping out the referenced video while it's playing with another one encoded at a different bitrate. Silverlight does this for you with its streaming engine, with Flash it's at least possible to synchronize all the components, but it's rarely done. (You need to synchronize audio and video to a high degree of precision to avoid the user noticing.)
This is a valid complaint, and actually one of Microsoft's major selling points on Silverlight, and it's why Netflix adopted it for their online viewer. The variable bitrate per viewer playback that adjusts itself according to your connection is extremely important to providing at least a basic experience. Netflix's implementation is a little bad (it does pause the video if your connection quality goes down, but there are other Silverlight players that do it seamlessly.)
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By variable bitrate, they mean changing the bitrate on a per-viewer basis. So, if someone has a particularly bad connection, it gives them a lower quality picture so that they can keep up. And if they're connection improves (they turn off their torrents, for example) then the bitrate they are being provided would improve.
As far as I know, the object in HTML5 does not allow swapping out the referenced video while it's playing with another one encoded at a different bitrate.
That's really a server issue and not a client issue. H.264 supports variable bit rate streaming and the server should be able to detect the connection speed by monitoring the TCP receive window, acknowledgements, and other flow- and congestion-control elements of TCP. It can then adjust the stream's bit rate of accordingly. As long as the client has properly implemented its h.264 decoder it all should just work.
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Variable bit rate encoded video does not allow a downloading client to skip chunks because they can't keep up, because those chunks encode whole frames and, in the case of H.264, frame data contains references to the previous frame to perform operations on them. So the result is that the client still has to download every frame, and the server is simply serving up a dumb file.
What you want is for the server to have say, ten different versions of the same video, encoded at different bit-rates, and for the cl
Re:OK ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than retooling their website it is more logical to do what they are actually doing and code a standalone app that will probably get rejected from the app store.
Re:OK ... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's probably more along the lines that Hulu isn't interested in rushing out an HTML5 app that will cost X to develop while their current client works perfectly well for the majority of their customers.
This is probably true. It will be more cost effective in the short term, but you're missing the big motivation. Hulu does not want to provide open video. They want to provide subscription services, which they're moving to on the Web right now for a portion of content. They can make more money by only providing content to Apple devices that pay a subscription fee via an app, especially since those users won't be able to just use a Web browser for some content. Remember, Hulu is run by the networks.
Rather than retooling their website it is more logical to do what they are actually doing and code a standalone app that will probably get rejected from the app store.
Why would it get rejected from the app store? It will be trivial to provide the same content in different containers in a simple Web app using almost completely code provided in Apple's toolkits. Netflix has done it and they use Silverlight on the Web. Your assertion that it will probably be rejected is just your bias showing.
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Why would it get rejected from the app store?
Most likely for competing with Apple's own video purchase options. I believe they typically cite "Redundant Functionality" reasons.
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Why would it get rejected from the app store?
Why did this app [macrumors.com] get rejected? It didn't even violate any rules. Apple could do the same thing to Hulu if they wanted--you never know, that's the thing.
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Why did this app [macrumors.com] get rejected?
Because it messes with Apple's copy control mechanisms they have contracts with the RIAA to protect in order to get music sales content?
Apple could do the same thing to Hulu if they wanted--you never know, that's the thing.
There's a big difference between "probably" and "possibly". Apple could possibly reject Hulu's app for some reason. There's no reason to think that is probable though (as "jaryd" claimed), unless you have some evidence to the contrary. It's the same as selling through any other store... maybe they'll want to carry your product, maybe not. Since Apple has approved a slew of
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And now they have two apps to maintain. Given Apple's reluctance to approve cross-platform apps, they probably have two separate codebases.
Re:OK ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, if a corporation dares to choose a widely-used product with a large install base, which fits their use requirements, as opposed to a relatively new, only moderate install base with different features available (no Firefox/Opera with H.264, no Safari/iPhone with Theora, no Internet Explorer period), which does not fit their use requirements on even one browser, then they must be 'in cahoots' with the company who makes that product.
I know you were going for a better-than-average first post without too much thought, but really, stop listening to Apple. Adobe is not a conspiracy.
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Yes, if a corporation dares to choose a widely-used product with a large install base, which fits their use requirements, as opposed to a relatively new, only moderate install base with different features available (no Firefox/Opera with H.264, no Safari/iPhone with Theora, no Internet Explorer period), which does not fit their use requirements on even one browser, then they must be 'in cahoots' with the company who makes that product.
I know you were going for a better-than-average first post without too much thought, but really, stop listening to Apple. Adobe is not a conspiracy.
Note: here, I am ignoring the specifics of Hulu like their need to track advertising and enforce "content protection" etc. in an effort to describe a bigger picture.
What we have here might be a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. HTML5 would have a larger installed base if there were more content available. In turn, there'd be more content available if HTML5 had a larger, more established installed base. Adoption by major players is one way of solving this. Incorporation as a standard feature into main
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Yes, if a corporation dares to choose a widely-used product with a large install base, which fits their use requirements, as opposed to a relatively new, only moderate install base with different features available (no Firefox/Opera with H.264, no Safari/iPhone with Theora, no Internet Explorer period), which does not fit their use requirements on even one browser, then they must be 'in cahoots' with the company who makes that product.
I know you were going for a better-than-average first post without too much thought, but really, stop listening to Apple. Adobe is not a conspiracy.
What we have here might be a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. HTML5 would have a larger installed base if there were more content available. In turn, there'd be more content available if HTML5 had a larger, more established installed base.
No, the original poster had it right - there simply isn't consistent browser support yet to make HTML5 more than an interesting sideline.
... but there likely would be if there were tons of content that demanded consistent browser support. I don't see how anything you are saying contradicts me.
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IE will do h264 as well with IE9.
The only browsers that won't will be firefox and opera. In case you haven't noticed, while not dead, firefox is losing out and has no direction, they are too busy acting like Sun/Nutscrape/AOL and Opera has never really mattered to anyone but a small percentage of geeks. Little of value will be lost.
Not that I expect them to jump ship, its just not worth the effort and HTML5 support is still rather limited as you said, IE doesn't do it YET. Hopefully there will never be a
Re:OK ... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not a surprise, I work with online video professionally and html5 is not yet a serious option.
RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and Flash are the only players that have the suite of features that are required to stream live and on-demand video properly.
I am looking forward to the day when html5 is ready but it looks like it is a long way off.
The "Flash is dead!" people have no idea what they're talking about.
I mean just look at the API for windows media player or realplayer and then go look at html5... they're not in the same league.
Serious ideological problem too (Score:3, Interesting)
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 commerci
Re:Serious ideological problem too (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM is an unsolved problem. I tell my customers not to bother with it. Most take my advice.
There can be no solution to DRM. All you can do is spend piles of money to make it more difficult for people to save/copy things. Then you have to do it all over again a few years later because everyone has the cracking tools installed.
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You put it in the container.
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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 same way you do with images, a simple javascript no-right-click function! In all seriousness people are always going to find a way to copy digital content. For basic YouTube stuff there's a plethora of Firefox plugins that will pull video and even convert it for you. Could you stop someone from using screencap software to simply snag the video? How about from outputting the signal to a stand-alone DVD recorder? The law of diminishing returns takes effect, but the studios are so paranoid about maint
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Why is it supposedly illegal to download a show that is freely broadcast over public airwaves?
Because even though you can record a show off of TV for your own personal use that doesn't grant you have the right to share it on the internet with others. It never has.
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RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and Flash are the only players that have the suite of features that are required to stream live and on-demand video properly.
Have you heard of YouTube? I think providing HTML5 and Flash content side by side, depending on the device entered the mainstream when they implemented that option.
The "Flash is dead!" people have no idea what they're talking about.
Clearly Flash is not dead, but it is stillborn for a large set of mobile users. As such any professional offering video on the Web has to be looking at it as one of the very few options they have going forward.
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Youtube doesn't stream video and they don't provide live feeds either. I'm sure progressive downloads can be done just as well in HTML5 as they can be done in flash, but that's totally different from what Hulu does.
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Have you heard of YouTube? I think providing HTML5 and Flash content side by side, depending on the device entered the mainstream when they implemented that option.
Of course he has, and to his point, YouTube does not support any reasonable trickplay (FF/RW/chapters/etc), seamless bitrate switching or DRM with HTML5. Trickplay and bitrate switching are required features once people start paying for content (they expect it to *just work*). DRM is a required feature to get content owners to offer their conte
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Have you heard of YouTube?
You mean the same Youtube that uses progressive download to serve content instead of streaming? That Youtube? I suggest you look up on the differences between the two before you speak up again.
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You could just post a link to the mp4 stream, lots of players handle that just fine.
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for flash there is a huge development environment with all kinds of knowledge on the internet to make it faster and cheaper. other than the fact that HTML5 isn't even a standard yet how do the dev tools compare? no one wants to code the website in assembly
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Flash isn't completely dead for video on the web. I wonder if Hulu and Adobe are in cahoots?
Perhaps but I really don't think so....
Flash will not die until all of those web developers that use it finally die off..
Well, other options exist (Score:2)
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 sh
Re:Well, other options exist (Score:4, Interesting)
HTML5 advocates should really give an option for content security aka DRM, that is how real World works for now...
Even if they wanted to, how would you propose that they do that? It would be trivial enough to add a "donotallowworthlesspirateusertocopyonpainofdeath" option to the video tag; but that would only be as useful as the various browser's enforcement of it. You might get some vendors on board(though that would hardly be a given. The FOSS guys hate DRM on principle, and the corporates already have their own DRM systems, and it isn't clear that they want the competition); but you would have absolutely no way to go after the ones that refused, or the fly-by-night redistribution of copies of firefox compiled with the -ignore_DRM_flags option set.
If you observe real world DRM systems, they are all either single-party(WMDRM, Fairplay, etc.) or multi-vendor standards controlled by IP cartels bristling with patents that you must license in order to implement whatever the attached spec is(CSS, HDCP, AACS). HTML5 is in neither position. There would be absolutely no way to stop the proliferation of implementations compliant enough to receive the video; but noncompliant with respect to denying it to the user(good luck, for instance, having your site distinguish between a good-faith/best-effort DRM implementing webkit build, and a slightly tweaked build that reports exactly the same ID strings but "accidentally" lets the precious premium content sit in a snoopable memory location...
On closed platforms, where undesired binaries can simply be excluded, it'd be trivial enough; but there would be Just No Way on PCs generally.
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How could you draw that inference? Is there something more that you know about that we don't?
A company indicates that they are unhappy with the state of affairs of HTML5 as it is currently implemented, because it doesn't do what they need, nor as easily as they can get it done with another development tool, and you indicate that you feel there's a conspiracy?
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Yeah, if you want high quality DRM, Flash seems to be the best.
Kaltura video platform (Score:2)
The rest of us will wonder what took you so long
Re:OK ... (Score:4, Insightful)
HTML5 could do the things they want, it would just not be very processor efficient
Hulu's new flash player that launched yesterday is also not processor efficient. Two days ago Hulu videos played at a reasonable frame rate on my old Mac laptop. Today it's impossible to watch. If it were in HTML5 it would run perfectly.
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Use the desktop player, they have not changed that. The new interface also does not do mouse hide, tested on Ubuntu 10.04.
Re:Somebody call the whaaaambulance (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you referring to Hulu or the HTML5 spec writers.
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Except that are doing more work (both upfront and in maintenance) in the form of a dedicated iPhone/iPad application. So I'm inclined to believe them.
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"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 con
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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 brok
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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.
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I see tearing on a Q8300 running linux. Flash videos that pan quickly tear even on windows.
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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.
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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.
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Easy enough and has already been done using virtualbox and a custom display front end.
You really can't stop the bumrush now that VirtualBox is as well done as it is and open source so anyone can write a front end for audio and video.