Who Needs Flash? CBS Prepares HTML5 Player for iPad

From DailyTech: The good news for HTML5 advocates is that Apple's iPad for better or worse may finally push the format into the mainstream, which could eventually displace proprietary formats like Flash and Silverlight. The bad news is that Apple has pushed a version of HTML5 that uses another proprietary format -- H.264.

This week observers discovered that the CBS.com homepage contained some suspicious new "iPad - test" links. Clicking these links in the desktop browser would redirect to a page with TV episodes on a Flash-driven player. If you spoofed your browser's User Agent to think you were an iPad or used the iPad SDK Simulator, though, you were redirected to an HTML5 version of the player.

Currently the videos do not play. However, the feature to enter "fullscreen mode" is properly functioning in the iPad SDK Simulator.

Well with CBS onboard the iPad and HTML5 score a big victory in their fight against Flash. CBS is a huge player in the TV business and beat out Fox to become the most viewed network in 2008-2009. Its TV shows include NCIS: Los Angeles, The Good Wife, Two and a Half Men, Criminal Minds, CSI: NY, Numb3rs, Cold Case, How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory, The Mentalist,Survivor, Cold Case, The Amazing Race, and 60 Minutes.

What it also means is that it drives HTML5 farther towards a proprietary implementation. H.264 patents are owned by a group of companies who license the format through independent Denver-based MPEG LA, LLC. In countries that uphold software patents (like the U.S.), both browser makers (like Apple) and commercial content providers (like CBS) may have to pay to use the codec.

View: Article @ Source Site