Hey Dan, ever heard of a staging area to do your testing? Apparently not judging by the screenshot above.
MacRumors took that "iPad - test - dan config - 3" content from the CBS.com homepage for a spin and discovered what appears to be
HTML5 (
not Flash) video. A bit more sleuthing reveals several "webkit" (the foundation of the iPad's and iPhone's mobile Safari browser) calls after peeling open the CSS. This suggests that CBS is preparing to serve up parallel HTML5 content with the launch of the notoriously
Flash-less iPad -- take
that Hulu -- becoming yet another high-profile company
swayed into providing video and
other content in an Apple friendly format. Then again, maybe CBS is just testing a "what if" scenario with no intention of moving this into production any time soon. US netizens can try it themselves by setting your browser to spoof the iPad's user agent and hitting the source below (for as long as it lasts) but you'll need the iPad SDK Simulator to view the actual HTML5 videos.
posted March 25th 2010 5:09AM
Already? Guess this lack-of-Flash won't be that big of a problem?
Why is it that the iPad is what gets these developers to redesign their websites when the iPad won't sell nearly as well as the iPhone. In fact there are probably more Tablet-PCs sold than iPads.
@Omen
Indeed, Omen, at the time of writing many, many, many more tablet PCs have been sold than iPads. Very perceptive of you.
Of course, perhaps CBS is looking to the future.
Oh, and of course remembering that this would work on the iPads little brothers and sisters too.
@Omen Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
@Omen The iPad didn't put HTML5 to motion :P it was on it's way no matter what, it's just progress. Flash is relatively buggy and put together with some chewing gum and a paper clip. HTML5 can do so much, no need to have as much plugins and addons, which means it's gonna be easier to code and to view.
@mikachu Nothing is going to be easier to code! That video they are playing will never play on FireFox, will never play on IE and still looking at Chrome. Cos the format is not supported. Coding will become harder now cos you have to render different formats for different browsers, we are just moving backward now.
@Lumi
Why so pessimistic? Within a year or so, every browser will play H264 embedded using HTML5 video. In fact, only Opera (which has like 1% market share) and Mozilla (which are just being dick-headed about it) are still making an issue out of this. Microsoft already is an H264 licensee, so they can use it (in fact, they co-created the specification). Eventually, the Mozilla foundation will cave in and just use the available OS codecs instead of insisting on integrating the whole world in their browser just so they can feel good about the 'free internet'. There really is no problem at all just using H264.
@Omen
I hate to say it. But a lot of people will buy into the hype, thus giving it a market. As much as i dont want it it... the iPad is going to be a major device.
@drange
Mozilla is not going to support H.264. Not within a year, not within two years. And Mozilla and Opera still have much bigger market share than Chrome & Safari.
And for an example Opera couldn't use Windows' DirectShow capabilities (i.e. "OS available codecs") because in its current form it sucks and wouldn't work with streaming media. That's why Opera decided to use GStreamer on all platforms.
@Eric P ... Except that Microsoft is committed to H.264. IE is kind of a popular browser, right ?
http://newteevee.com/2010/03/17/microsoft-throws-its-weight-behind-html5-and-h-264/
@Omen If you take all brands and generations maybe the Tablet PCs sold more. But this here is a media device and costs a lot less.
@ddddd If those developers are just half more motivated than Adobe's it'll catch up quickly.
@ddddd Your kidding, right? To actually say Flash has been around longer than HTML. The cake. It's been taken.
There is a reason Flash is not a Web-standard.
Go H-T-M-L-5! Kick some A$$.
The reason why Apple isn't adopting Flash is because they don't want to have a FartApp or a TowerDefense-Game available for free. So as soon as HTML5 will be able to deliver the interactive things Flash can do, Apple will add another restriction.
@user47alpha
You realize that out of the billions of iPhone apps that have been downloaded... most of them have been free, right?
Question: if you're a developer... would you make more money from selling an app for 99 cents and keeping 70 cents... or from putting your silly Flash game on an ad-supported web page and make a fraction of a penny each time someone came to the page?
Current Flash games aren't made for your finger... they are expecting a mouse and keyboard, or hover states, or other things you can't get from a touch screen.
And if you wanna spend all your time creating the Flash games that *will* work on a smartphone with Flash... you might as well have spent the time to make a native iPhone app or Android app.
We get it... apps can be made in Flash. But, native iPhone apps are 1000 times better than a Flash app.
@user47alpha
I'm convinced that these "fart app" drones have never even used the App Store. Quite frankly, the App Store is totally great. The selection is unbelievable and there are quality apps for virtually every imaginable purpose. There's a reason why everyone else is scrambling to create their own app stores.
For one, you have to do some digging in the App Store if you want a fart app. They aren't on any popularity lists for free or paid apps. The whole "fart app" joke is so old and irrelevant that it's pathetic to still be using it.
Also, you can download fart apps for virtually any device. Apparently, there is a demand for those things.
@user47alpha
Also, please show me a tower defense game made in Flash that can compare with something like GeoDefense. I mean really, try to find something made with Flash that even looks like it's from the same decade as GeoDefense.
@user47alpha There are already "Tower defense" games for the Iphone/Ipod for free.
hei Engadget... and when you will be plugin-free?
HTML5 RULEZ
Could anyone who's able to access this confirm one cannot right click and download the video file as you can with Vimeo's HTML5 experiment?
If you can, this will be a short lived experiment.
Uhm, this has absolutely nothing to do with the iPad.
They are just following the trend and it was always stupid using flash to playback video.
Vimeo and YouTube already does HTML5 playback of videos.
@Tes Why are you comparing Apple's video format with Flash?
Everybody seem to believe, that HTML5 is a comprehensive Web-Standard, but it's just a bunch of ideas and subjekt to change. Probably for another couple of years...
And only because it will provide the video tags, it's not able to replace Flash or Silverlight or other technologies.
H264 is not an open Format, so you'll have to pay licensing fees. And if HTML5 will use an open format, the ipad won't play it again (lacking Hardware-Acceleration for this formats)
Finally there is no difference if you play H264 embedded in Flash or HTML5 when there is Hardware-acceleration.
Today every Implementation of HTML5 video playback i have testet needs more processing power, than it's flash counterpart. (Ok, i have not been testing on a Mac, where flash is supposed to be badly implemented)
@Atkins
But HTML5 as it's planned supports only a few tasks, that flash supports, so it's definitely no replace for flash.
And with H264 i think it is not a good idea to use techniques you have to pay for, as standard.
Mozilla or Opera for example won't use this standard because of the millions they would have to pay.
But the worst problem is, that the decision, wich standard will be used, is not to be made anytime soon. So you can't really design programs, hardware around it.
@WiesiAut
Mozilla doesn't have to pay sh*t if they just hook into the OS codecs, really, these horror FUD stories are getting blow way out of proportion.
If they keep this up, FLV...
...will be gone in a flash.
@JPeak YEEEAAAAAAH!
@JPeak
If they don't get Flash on the 'Pad, FLV will be a... Flash in the pan.
YEEEAAAAAAH!
Macrumors ripped this story like they do everything. How about giving some credit to the original source?
@WiesiAut Flash is also a bunch of ideas, and it doesn't even change.
So what if H264 needs licensing?
@ddddd .. what on EARTH are you talking about. How can H.264 be 10 years behind FLV ? You do know that H.264 is what is used in Blu-Ray right ?
youtube has had html5 video for a while. Vimeo has as well. Vimeo's works horribly. Youtube's works pretty well, but the video is a bit pixelated.. I think Flash is still the way to go until there is one unified format, otherwise we're back to the 90's.
@rickumus Macrumors "ripped" the story? They posted a link to the source.
@Eric P So what if there are licensing fees? Jpeg is licensed too? So?
@WiesiAut I am pretty sure it will work out. All that is neede is a serious push (now, if what's happening nowadays is a serious push, remains to be seen) Look at the Jpeg, works very well.
And Mozilla and Opera - what are they going to do when everyone adapts it? They aren't big enough to do anything.
@drange What he (@drange) said. Can't put it better :)
@drange Ah, crap. that was intended as a response to EricP.
Guys, every commercial video team is testing HTML5 since it became available. It's called a proof of concept. It's weird these guys put it on the public site, but I guess a developer got lazy and just dropped it on a server he/she had access to.
I am curious to see how anyone is going to deliver advertising effectively in HTML5 when the standard content formats are FLV and SWF.
Will this also work for the iPhone?
Not that I care since I don't live in the US, but would anyone want to bet against Hulu adopting an iPhone/iPad-friendly solution that doesn't use Flash? Frankly, the BBC has demonstrated that this can be done for years already so I don't see any reason to suppose that other sites will not follow suit.
I think we are going to see more articles like this as the iPad launch nears....Happy to see this than more gaming apps http://smi.sh/d0d4e
As far as I know, HTML5 video doesn't have copy protection, so they are only targeting webkit browsers with this test to avoid giving normal users an easy way to download videos. And trust me, people will figure this out and start spoofing the agent to download videos.
And people saying this isn't targeting the iPad and Apple specifically is kidding themselves, it says right under the video that it is targeting the iPad. And you can bet the testing will be done for the iPad and not much else. If CBS ends up restricting HTML5 access to only to webkit browsers (or worse, only to the iPad) then that throws any benefit to the general web out of the window.
How does one go about spoofing with Safari as to make it register as the iPad browser? I'd love to test this.
I'm not sure why people even feel right comparing HTML5's ability to stream video to the breadth of functionality available in a Flash movie. It's grapes to oranges, at best...
I think native playback of H.264 video is as cool as the next guy, but let's not lose sight of the bigger picture.
Also, what are you people doing that flash player crashes your browsers "all the time?" I can't recall a single time flash player has been responsible for crashing anything on my machine.