According to Hulu, HTML5 is not yet ready for its needs. “We continue to monitor developments on HTML5, but as of now it doesn’t yet meet all of our customers’ needs,” Hulu writes, “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.”
Isn’t that the whole problem? We don’t need a player that does *everything*. We’re trying to escape the bloat over here. All that other stuff they need to do, that’s what scripting is for, client and/or server side.
Didn’t they get the memo?
KISS
HTML5 video is _really_ badly implemented in all browsers right now. I suspect most Flash developers think it quite a joke. Hulu need something that is stable to develop with and has better buffer / rate control. I would give it two years for HTML5 video to shape up.
hulu will be given content only when it shows content owners it is doing all it can to stop people from recording their shows.
Is there a mechanism to inject DRM in “naked” h.264 streams? can there be any?
Any alternative will be unacceptable to hulu if it cant protect the stream agains “pirates”
DRM comes in many forms. Whilst streams are not protected on the iPad/iPhone (outside of iTunes media), the device has no way to save the data, no apps are allowed that could do that and the TV out has broadcast flag.
Encryption is a minor thing when the device is under such control that you can’t actually _do_ anything with an unencrypted stream but watch it.
That is really worrying when you think about it.
how will you get that stream on the iphone/ipad? You will either have to do it through a native app or a web interface.
If you use a native app, then the stream will not be naked because it will come through the app and the DRM will be on the app.
if they streams over a browser, then it will be “naked” and yes, you wont be able to save it on the iphone/ipad, but all it will take for everybody else to get and record the stream is to spoof hulu with a fake iphone/ipad browser identification and it will be as easy as downloading youtube clips, with extensions or stand alone recording applications.
DRM will save flash
No, badly designed hacks which are called DRM will save Flash.
DRM is always advertised as something vital to certain interest groups, however never every tries to push for proper design or implementations of such.
Instead of having an encrypted channel from source to destination and some intermediate (the player) handling the key request and exchance, most “DRM” implementations opt for utterly complex chains of different mechanisms.
If DRM would have any significant importance to any interest party, they would have lobbied for secure implementations for a long time.
They haven’t, otherwise we would have seen generations of aideo and audio hardware capable of decrypting content and players simply controlling the streams and configuring parameter such as output areas or which device to use.
When will content owners realise that DRM is not the solution to piracy as so long as content can be viewed / heard, then it can be copied.
That given youtube’s history of trying to prevent people from copying content and instead use their player why I don’t understand their even trying HTML 5’s VIDEO tag. (NOT that they actually tried HTML5)
Does HTML5 have an equivalent to RTMP? NOPE. How ‘secure’ is it in preventing user downloads of content? NOT AT ALL…
End of story. I cannot fathom Youtube’s interest in it, since they’ve gone above and beyong using tricks to force people to use their player for the content – HTML5 will mean anyone can direct link or copy… the antithesis of their entire promotional scheme!!! I have the sneaking suspicion their eager beaver coders aren’t talking to marketing.
Much less that I very much doubt that the porn industry is gonna touch it with a six foot… uhm…
Which is why HTML5 video may very well end up the betamax of the Internet. Even where it is technologically superior (arguable) it simply doesn’t offer certain things content providers have come to expect – and if the content providers don’t embrace it, it will be pretty much stillborn.
Edited 2010-05-13 23:18 UTC
There is no way they can prevent copying. It’s already incredibly easy with the Flash player anyway. However, I remember reading about a way to prevent websites from direct linking.
YouTube could require that the HTTP referrer is from itself. It’s certainly possible to spoof it, but it would not be reasonable for a website to require its viewers to spoof their referrer so they could watch a video.
YouTube could still allow embedding (with its custom controls and ads) using iframes.
That depends on your point of view. To the average consumer, yes. But there are a lot of people for whom it will be useful. Personally, I don’t ever plan on watching anything with DRM, so I really don’t care what the content providers think.
HTML5 makes it even easier which isn’t much of a selling point.
YouTube might but I can’t see other content providers signing up to do extra work.
I’m certainly not a fan of Flash but HTML5 is really more appealing to content viewers than content providers.
But it can certainly be made such a pain if they provide an easier route – like their player mechanism.
NOT so easy if you transmit your video via RTMP to a player running inside the flash plugin. Doesn’t put it into the cache, requires authorization to even start streaming, and the only real way to copy it is with a packet sniffer… Most of which are so laden with malware it’s enough for most people to go “Ok, I’ll just link to the original page”.
You do know what RTMP is, right?
Whereas I have no problem with watching video on Hulu or similar services – to the point I’ve cancelled my cable TV service as why pay for it twice as I’m already paying for broadband.
That it has any sort of DRM doesn’t bother me in the least – nor would it most people who are able to make rational informed decisions about what that means. It’s only the tinfoil hat brigade that seems to have their panties in a wad.
It’s the internet. Content is public, otherwise it shouldn’t be published on it.
Anything that can be shown in your screen can also be recorded back to a proper file. There’s also no need for any industry to migrate to the standard if the de facto is working, unless inertia moves everyone to do it, which is probably what’s going to happen as with any hyped tech.
With mainstream browsers already implementing it, and some important sites migrating or offering it as a choice, I doubt it. The good thing is it’s already available, standard, platform agnostic, not controlled by a single corporation, and has the potential to kill flash (and flash ads with it). What’s not to like?
Well said. Very well said.
Concise, accurate, entirely to the point, and it utterly takes all of the wind out of Hulu’s sails (and similar entities who, like Hulu, are trying to commandeer the public access internet).
The entire purpose of the Internet is to be a public network for sharing knowledge, data and information.
There is no room for DRM on the public Internet. If your data requires DRM, there is utterly no place for it on the Internet.
DRM in video streams is used to reduce casual piracy.
Sure you can capture any video stream but that requires special software and a decent machine. The open nature of HTML5 would make it very easy to create a browser extension that takes any HTML5 video stream and converts it into a local file. That’s a problem for content providers that want to sell movie rentals.
Once again, you just don’t seem to get it.
The Internet is not for “content providers” selling movie rentals. That is not its purpose. (Having said that, the Internet IS suitable for ordinary people sharing their own videos, perhaps via YouTube or facebook, and they too are “content providers”. YouTube content providers.).
The Internet is for public knowledge/information/data sharing. There is no place for DRM in that context.
HTML5 may not be suitable for what Hulu want to do, but nevertheless HTML5 (sans DRM, with open and royalty-free codec) is entirely suitable for the Internet.
Edited 2010-05-14 04:05 UTC
Not so fast there, I think he got it all right..
Well first I will say that “the internet” is for whatever the users want to do with it, and this does not necessarily have to comply with some arbitrary usage law you just made up.
The internet is a computer network. Some of the uses are like you state above other uses include VOIP, email, and Video with DRM.
Well there is no room for passwords and access control in that context either, if the internet is only for public data who needs passwords, accounts, and privacy. In fact whenever you connect a computer to the internet all information on the harddisk of that computer should be posted on the internet, that’s how public it it.
This should probably read:
“is entirely suitable for some parts of the Internet.”
Not so fast there … I think you missed it too.
Firstly … a history lesson:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#History
Commercial interests were 17 years late to the party. They simply don’t get to say what the Internet is for.
The second point is that my computer is mine. My Internet bandwidth is mine. I paid for them both. Your computer is yours. Despite their dearest wishes, neither Hulu, nor Microsoft, nor Apple, nor MGM or Disney or whoever, can dictate how MY machine should function. (You might be willing to let them browbeat you, but that is your prerogative to be a doormat, and has nothing to do with me or millions of others).
No so-called “content provider” has any right to dictate how my machine should function. They simply DON’T get any say on what data I may or may not manipulate or copy where, on my machine. There is NO place for DRM (management of someone else’s rights) on MY machines. They have NO rights over MY machines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_freedom
If certain parties calling themselves “content providers” have data they do not wish me to copy (as is fair enough), then they should keep that data off the public Internet, pure and simple. The Internet is not theirs to dictate to. There is NO place for DRM on the Internet.
If these facts kill Hulu’s business model, then that is Hulu’s problem, no-one else’s.
Edited 2010-05-14 10:24 UTC
and it STILL took effectively a decade for it to be anything more than a back-room *nix geek oddity that normal people didn’t give a flying fig about. Remember, until HTML caught on and bandwidth made it practical to deploy, Compuserve, Genie, and even fidoNet were a billion times more useful to the average computer user than ARPANET ever was!
It’s all part of this attitude you see about the internet from various parties – the same attitude that founded the open source movement – Sour grapes by the back room *nix server geeks who got left behind by the REAL computer revolution.
See, the real computer revolution wasn’t spawned by the people dicking around in unix – It was a revolution driven by hobbyists cobbling together 8-bit systems in their basements and the efforts of companies like Compuserve, Genie, Microsoft, IBM, Commodore, Apple, Tandy, Borland, Lotus and even Digital Research – and I’d even credit game makers like Sierra and Infocom as contributing more to get us where we are now than anything the Unix geeks managed in the 30+ YEARS they had to play with it – with ONE exception – TBL. The unix guys may have built the infrastructure, but they didn’t make it useful, or interesting, or available to everyone.
*** NOTE *** the ISP’s that made it available to everyone are also private companies with commercial interests.
Neither do you. A company wants to go online and provide a product, who are you to say no? You don’t want to use it, fine… but your authoritarian “It has no place” malarkey isn’t just arrogant, it’s ignorant too. “It’s supposed to be open to everyone” works both ways – that’s what freedom is.
… and sometimes freedom means you have to tolerate that other people might want to use things you don’t like – which is where this whole ‘stamp it out’ mentality is one step removed from censorship and the opposite of freedom! That so many of the FLOSS zealots talk that way in the name of freedom – Well, to quote the Wizard of Oz <auntieEm>Being a Christian woman, I can’t say it.
It’s a very Leninist attitude, people won’t go to communism of their own free will or out of the goodness of their hearts, so you have to drag them there at gunpoint. Same basic idea, the ‘public’ can’t be “trusted” to choose your choice, so litigate the minority into control. You don’t like what the majority of people will choose and in the process not give a rats ass about ANY of your views on the subject – THAT’S YOUR PROBLEM!
… and that really seems to be your problem. What the majority of people will choose isn’t what you would, so you want that narrow minority viewpoint forced on everyone.
Commercial interests are what made the Internet the success it is today – Companies like AOL, eBay, Amazon, Google… much less Microsoft, Opera, Apple… Without Apple Konqueror would probably still be in the “also ran” kategory with nobody looking at KHTML as a rendering engine. (or as we call it today, webkit)
… and here comes the tinfoil hat brigade. Oh noes, I might have flash installed to watch their content on their website with all it costing me being 3 minutes of advertising spread out over a 20 minute TV show – THEY’RE HIJACKING MY MACHINE!!! RUN FOR THE HILLS!!!
NOT
You know, the paranoid delusions wear a little thin after a while. You might want to consider going back to figuring out who shot JFK.
DRM paranoia… Using phrases like “digital freedom” as a glittering generality when most all of their “down with the man” rhetoric is in fact the exact OPPOSITE. Learn what freedom means nimrods.
If a company has content I want, I might actually be willing to pay for it or allow them to protect it – that’s my choice… That choice is an expression of freedom. Stamping it out and saying it has no place – that’s called totalitarianism, the opposite of freedom… and the root of my issues with the Open Source movement and it’s nonsensical fantasy-land nonsense.
But you have a good read of that Wikipedia page on “digital rights” it’s chock full of card stacking, glittering generalities, assertion, bandwagon, simplification and even transfer. There’s even some subtle name calling, a bit of plain folks, and the oh so popular lesser of two evils… Propaganda and indoctrination, nothing more, nothing less.
“Wizards first rule” in action.
Edited 2010-05-14 22:34 UTC
Hulu could achieve what you want via a dedicated “Hulu viewer” application, which you installed on your machine, that dealt only with Hulu’s content. That approach would be perfectly fair enough, and it would respect both choice AND ownership rights at both ends of the transaction.
However, AFAIK Hulu’s approach is not like that, and the DRM they use extends into the browser and the OS of the client machines. That is not acceptable, as Hulu do not own the browser or the OS or the client machines.
Edited 2010-05-16 10:02 UTC
Hardly. This is not about my access to data on some other machine, belonging to someone else (which is what passwrods control). This is about my OWNERSHIP of my machine, and your ownership of yours, and so one.
No-one has ANY rights on MY machine unless I say so.
This includes DRM. MY machine is simply not going to restrict MY rights. Hulu (or whoever) has NO rights on my machine.
Nope. It reads exactly as it should read.
Hulu has NO rights on my machine. If they don’t want data copied about the place, they shouldn’t be sending it over the Internet in the first place.
If you don’t like their terms, don’t use their service. This isn’t a rights issue at all. They say “we’ll provide this content but you can only view it if you use this software that prevents you from copying it”. That is perfectly reasonable. If you don’t like that, then don’t use their software (or their content). Nobody’s rights are being infringed, nobody’s computer is being taken control of (without your consent). Get over it.
so the internet is your machine?
care to give me the root password?
In actuality I concur with you on the issue that there should be no need for drm, but as long as our economy is based on money people will want to have money for what they do and I’m sane enough to admit that it sort of works and that there is no point in abolishing it just now.
nobody is forcing anyone to USE drm themselves, nobody is taking over your machine if you don’t want it. if you don’t want to have windows control your machine, don’t install it. if you don’t want to have hulu control your machine don’t use it either or if you deeply care about how it controls other machines take it apart and report your findings.
what’s your problem?
Edited 2010-05-17 20:05 UTC
And where is this list of “Internet rules and dictats” you seem to be referring to?!?!
My machine, which I own, is on the Internet. I have certain “rules and dictates” that “content providers selling movie rentals” have no rights on MY machine.
There are, in fact, millions upon millions of machines on the Internet which, like mine, “content providers selling movie rentals” have no rights over at all. The Internet is a peer-to-peer network, it is not like broadcast TV or cable.
If it turns out that in order to do business, Hulu needs to have rights over other machines on the Internet NOT owned by Hulu, then Hulu’s business model simply lies outside of the natural “rules and dictates” of the Internet.
This is just the way it is. It naturally falls out this way, given the very machine-to-machine peer-to-peer structure of the Internet itself.
Edited 2010-05-14 11:06 UTC
Hulu does not have access to your machine.
You have to install Flash and then voluntarily make a secure connection between them and your browser.
It’s a voluntary secured connection. If you don’t like the terms then don’t make the connection.
So by your logic, I suppose I have a right to access any data you are sending over SSH via the internet because the internet is public and all data is free? I think you’d probably be a bit pissed if I helped myself to your encrypted or private communications. AIM chats? Gmail? SFTP? All that’s fair game, right?
Or is it that the Internet is a medium for communication, public or private, and that includes uses such as what amounts to video rental.
Are you talking about the Internet or the web? Because plenty of information streams over the Internet that is anything but public. And if you are talking about the web, I disagree. There are so many amazing things that are and will be done on the web that aren’t public at all.
Why is it so wrong for someone to want to offer a very popular service like Hulu over the web that requires some level of control or DRM? The business model requires that control or it can’t be offered to the many people who are more than happy to accept it that way.
Hulu isn’t trying to commandeer the public access Internet. That’s crazy. They’re trying to make money offering a service to Internet users.
Fair enough, I suppose, concerning non-public information on the Internet. It should be OK for Hulu to offer a service via a special communictaions protocol superimposed on to of other (standard) web protocols.
What must not be allowed to happen, however, is for Hulu’s peculiar requirements to drive the web standards.
If you want to send something private over the public access web, then encrypt that file for goodness sake, or use the SSL layers or something. PGP is very available to everyone. If this doesn’t suit Hulu, then they should require a special client application, they can’t try to commandeer browsers such that only proprieatry browser can exist. They cannot impose (and expect to enforce) a “no copy flag” DRM policy on standard browser clients and/or operating systems. It just isn’t viable. For a start, the browser client and the operating system it runs under are the property of client individual, they are NOT Hulu’s property.
So needing client-side DRM requirements goes against the very principle of the Internet.
There is no place for DRM protocols over the public access net. This CANNOT be the standard. This CANNOT be a requirement for browsers.
Edited 2010-05-14 06:55 UTC
So in other words, no HULU, no Songbird, no iTunes, no Steam, no HTTPS, no H.323, no IMS, no SIP, no RTP, no MGCP… no Skype, certainly no Box.net or any of the dozen other ‘store your personal files online’ websites… no subscription news services, of course you can’t possibly have webmail or access to your bank account info… No paypal, No google docs since the documents can be set to not be open to everyone… Shall I go on?
That’s a pretty bleak outlook on the Internet. In other words, god forbid companies produce an online product people might be willing to pay for or that can be paid for via some other revenue stream, put it online and at least have some form of car door locks (doesn’t stop a crim, but keeps honest people honest). OH NOES, NOT THAT?!?
… and that right there folks is your anti-corporate zealotry in action. Also probably why the suits at the various COMPANIES don’t take any of that dirty hippy nonsense seriously. In that way your ‘free as in freedom’ whackjobs are their own worst enemies.
But again, when people try to sell freedom by way of restrictions… The term “snake oil” comes to mind. See why I think someone needs to explain the word “freedom” to most of the sheep buying into the 60’s style “companies are evil” dogma.
Seriously, this nonsense is getting so far out there Dr. Timothy Leary would be wondering what you were experimenting with. We’re talking one step removed from “Turn on, tune in, drop out”…
Probably why the top supporters of all this anti-corporate schlock are usually either career educators, career lecturers, or kids still having life paid for by mommy and daddy.
There’s this naive idealism to it that’s just SO depressing that anyone is DUMB ENOUGH to buy into it.
Edited 2010-05-14 12:27 UTC
Moan and bitch all you want, you still aren’t getting any rights on my machine. Period.
Hulu can suck eggs for all I care.
Oh yeah, baby. Deal with it.
BTW: It looks like you aren’t getting any rights at these organisations, either:
http://www.opensource.org/
http://www.opensourceforamerica.org/
No soup^w rights for YOU! (Not on OUR machines, anyway).
Edited 2010-05-14 14:40 UTC
No, again, this is not a rights issue. Hulu says they’ll provide you content if you use their special player. If you don’t like their special player, don’t go to their site. Simple as that. It would only be a rights infringement issue if you were required to use Hulu and required to use their player, whether you wanted to or not (perhaps via government law or Microsoft installing it on all versions of Windows, etc.). In that case, you’d have a leg to stand on. Otherwise, you’re just another angry pirate who can’t get all his content free.
There is nothing wrong with Hulu having a special-to-purpose player which included DRM. The only problem would be when Hulu (and other similar companies) start trying to impose DRM into people’s browsers, OSes, machines and indeed web protocols.
Isn’t THAT what Hulu are saying with their criticisms of HTML5?
Hulu just don’t get any say about HTML5. HTML5, and the Internet in general (which is what is involved with browsers and operating systems) is NOT written to Hulu’s purpose, and Hulu don’t own any part of the client machines on which they apparently wish to impose universal DRM.
So I strongly disagree with you. Hulu wanting DRM provisions within HTML5 is very much a rights issue, and purely and simply Hulu don’t have any rights at all to do that.
FTA:
No they won’t, Mr Eugene Wei. Absolutely, positively, definitely, they won’t.
Look at that … DRM-less HTML5 appears to be good enough for CBS.
Edited 2010-05-16 10:17 UTC
Well, Hulu says that HTML5 doesn’t provide what they need, but Flash does. It didn’t sound like they are pushing for those features to be in HTML5, although if they ended up there, great. Also, note that many of the features that they need are not DRM-related, but simply have to do with managing video quality and whatnot. Maybe you can do without, but they’ve decided that’s how they want to solve the problem and you shouldn’t begrudge them that.
Now, suppose that DRM did make it into HTML5. So what? Just don’t go to sites that use it. After all, even DRM as it stands now is implemented using features already on your own computer (e.g., OS APIs), so in a way, you already have DRM on your machine. But again, if you don’t like it, don’t go to sites that make use of it and ask your friends to do the same. Up until the point that they make you view content and the content is DRM-protected, it’s a still a choice that you have. Call me when the only thing you can do on the Internet is go to Hulu and HTML5 has DRM built-in and you are required by law to use the Internet (and go to Hulu). Then we can talk about rights.
Your sense of self-importance is awe inspiring.
Here’s the thing: Hulu et al. don’t care about you or your machine. There isn’t some cloak-and-dagger conspiracy to install super-secret software on your machine to control it.
The internet that you seem to have taken personal ownership of was opened up to commercial interests specifically for them to develop it and expand it. Once companies started to realize the internet could be a commercially viable model for business, it drove demand, which in turn drove investment, which in turn is the reason people now have the benefit of broadband connections instead of crappy old per-minute dial-up connections. If the internet police had somehow held to your utopian view that the internet should be able freedom and ponies, then hundreds of millions of people would today be denied the benefits that internet connectivity has brought them.
Yes, companies always seem to be trying to “control” the internet, and they will continue to fail, simply because it has scaled beyond the point where any single organization or even consortium of organizations can dictate absolutely how it can be used.
The availability of Hulu is actually a victory in some sense, because it signaled that the content providers are starting to get that people want easy access to online content. It’s a much more progressive view than their previous tactic of lobbying the government to restrict and apply draconian controls to protect their old business model. Is it perfect? No, but there are many users that find value in the service without caring about the fact that they have taken measures to try and inconvenience viewers from storing the streamed content.
This pervasive sense of entitlement to free content is specifically the reason that the content providers push harder to lock it down. What gives you or anyone else the right to say that hulu has no right streaming DRM-protected content over the internet? The market, that is their target base of internet users, will make that decision for themselves.
On the subject of freedom, you’re missing the point. The ultimate freedom of the internet is that you are in no way obligated to use Hulu or any other content provider who chooses not to use the open standards you prefer.
If I can have the convenience of catching an episode of a show that I missed, I’m willing to trade the inconvenience of flash. That’s the agreement I’m making with them as a user of their service, and it’s my choice to make, they’re not making it for me.
DRM can be abused, and I’m opposed to DRM controls on media/content that I purchase outright, but I also see it as an enabler for services and content that may not otherwise be brought to the web.
If content providers can’t provide services in a manner I deem acceptable, then I won’t use them. That’s my freedom to choose. And if others choose to use those same services that I might not, that’s their choice to make and not mine.
Freedom is about choice. Open standards and protocols enable alternatives to closed and proprietary models, which is certainly not a bad thing, but otherwise “freedom” at the expense of choices and alternatives is not really freedom at all.
You have twisted the point somewhat, but still manage to make a good argument.
OK, so I will try to be brief, and I trust that you really do wish a discussion and that you will not misconstrue my argument again.
It is true that my machine is not important. What is also true, however, is that there are many, many millions of machines, just like mine, that Hulu does not own. They don’t own any of them. They don’t own any tiny piece of them. They don’t own the Internet bandwidth those machines use.
Therefore, Hulu do NOT have any rights at all over those machines.
Now Hulu’s model of distributing copyrighted content to client machines on the Internet, and having some anti-copying control over content once it arrives on said machines is OK in and of itself. Hulu could make a dedicated player for this purpose, and there would be nothing contentious at all about what they would be doing.
But AFAIK Hulu are not doing that. AFAIK Hulu have integrated their DRM right into the browser and into the OS of client machines. Now THAT is taking over some rights on machines they don’t own.
This is where they cross the line of acceptability, and this is why they deserve to be utterly rejected by the people who they are trying to control and restrict. This part of their business model utterly deserves to fail.
AFAIK — wrong. Hulu has not integrated DRM into the browser or the OS. And so what if they did? Don’t go to their site. Problem solved.
Or maybe, if people stopped insisting on pirating everything, we wouldn’t need DRM and this issue would be moot. You want to get the content, you agree to their terms. Otherwise, go elsewhere. Simple as that. They aren’t controlling your computer or denying you any “rights”. Stop being a tool and either get your content legally, or shut the fuck up.
Isn’t it a little bit of a wishful thinking? So in particular:
– who is offering it nowadays?
– in what browsers is it already available?
– standard and platform agnostic? What if Mozilla decides to use Theora? What will content providers do? Encode videos in two formats?
– last but not the least – if HTML5 (not just video) is about to replace Flash, is going to be so cool for animations etc. – who said, that it will not be used for advertisements too? 🙂
I say no way to It’s the internet. Content is public, otherwise it shouldn’t be published on it.
The internet is another form of media. People who want to sell products on the internet should be allowed to do so without fear of one person purchasing it and then freely distributing it to 1000 of his friends – this undermining the seller’s ability to profit from his product.
Whoa! Where did you get that notion from? By that logic newspapers, films, and almost all other media would carry openly duplicatable, redistributable content!
..prohibited accessing entries about Hulu with the message “We’re sorry, currently our Hulu news can only be viewed within the United States. Yada yada yada..” for non-american IPs, at least per profile option. Oh well.
Flash offers many features still not available in HTML5. Video publishers want to experiment with HTML5 to support the iPad and other “iDevices” but they are not willing to give up yet on everything that Flash provides which includes monetization of their content via various Ad sources, security, reliable video delivery and reporting. Until all of those features are met, video publishers will continue to favor Flash.
What I don’t understand is why it has to be all one or the other? can’t Flash and HTML5 co-exist? after all Microsoft apparently see’s, through their development of HTMl5 technologies, a future where Silverlight and HTML5 can co-exist. If HTML5 can fill in for over half of the requirements and Silverlight/Flash fill in for the places where content providers require DRM – I don’t see why there should be a conflict.
I don’t find it at all surprising. Hulu is run by the Hollyweird, isn’t it?
The lack of features like rate control is an important technical point. Is this something that can be added without a spec change (e.g. does not need a revision of HTML5) or is it something that browsers can fix by improving implementation? Is this something that can be fixed without making the video src something non-http, or can it be fixed over http?
DRM is another matter, but surely technical capabilities like buffers and rates and so forth can be fixed. The only question is: What are the requirements? Where do we fix it? How should we fix it? Is there anything that Flash players can’t do/make hard that could be fixed at the same time?
Hulu is garbage… why does every other flash video play fine on Firefox on my linux machine but I need to run the 32bit binary Firefox to get Hulu to work?
I don’t think there is any technical reason… they are just doing a platform detection, then refusing to play on 64bit Linux browser.
On the otherhand, their Hulu Desktop for Linux seems to be fairly good. The interface is clunky and slow but the video seems okay.