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Commentary: The Five Key Myths About HTML5
Pay no attention to the man behind the Mac. HTML5 won't be a serious consideration for at least a few years.
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Posted on September 2, 2010
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[The following is an excerpt from Jan Ozer's Streaming Media Learning Center blog. Click here to read the entire post.]

I was preparing for a webinar last week and scanned 46 websites to see how many used HTML5 as the primary playback option for video. This was a mix of media sites (14), business to consumer sites (22) and business to business sites (10). The answer was 1 - Wikipedia - with YouTube offering HTML5 as an alternative to Flash. Even Apple - the sugar doesn't melt in my mouth, we believe in open standards -- poster child for HTML5 uses the QuickTime plug-in for displaying video on Apple.com. 

That got me thinking; why would any site where video was mission critical use HTML5 today, or even in the near term? There’s no standardized way to protect their content, no streaming server that can efficiently dole the content out to multiple viewers on different browsers and no scheme for adaptive streaming. There isn’t even full support for all advertising servers.

Looking at it from the other direction, the installed base of HTML5 compatible browsers is only around 40-50%, depending upon who you ask, and you need to produce using at least two, perhaps three codecs to service those browsers. That made me realize that HTML5 is a FUD and media driven fiction that won't be widely relevant for at least three or four years, and then only if the relevant parties make some hard decisions that they've as of yet shied away from. 

So here are my five key myths about HTML5. See here for the detailed explanation behind each.

Myth 1. Current Producers Hate Flash

Myth 2. HTML5 is Ready for Prime Time

Myth 3. Group Standards are the Best Way to Advance Technology Development

Myth 4. iPad Compatibility Equals HTML5 Compatibility

Myth 5. H.264 Video Equals HTML5-Compatible Video

HTML5 came to prominence with Apple's decision to exclude Flash from the iPad. As part of that furor, HTML5 become the flavor of the month, and has garnered significant press and developer attention that far exceed its short term usability for most sites that don't simply adopt technology for technology's sake. HTML5's value proposition today, and for the foreseeable future, is "encode in more formats that offer no advantage over H.264, and play on fewer computers, and distribute your on-demand video with less quality of service, fewer features and less ability to monetize than you can with Flash or Silverlight. Oh, and forget live."

Wake me up when HTML5 is ready for prime time.

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Posted By Jan Ozer on 9/10/2010 9:49:49 AM:

Mark:

I think with multicasting and peer to peer in FMS 4, it's not just the media companies anymore who want the advanced capabilities of Flash (or Silverlight). Seems to me that if Brightcove or Kaltura offered P2P and multicasting in their product offerings (and why woudln't they?) it would be a lot more valuable than anything HTML5 has to offer.

We agree that Adobe will do everything that they can to make Dreamweaver the absolute best HTML5 authoring tool avaialble. Where we disagree (at least with your first message) is that Adobe thinks that HTML5 is the future.

I also agree that in two years, lots of developers will be building HTML5 into their web sites. We disagree that this means that they will abandon Flash in general, or Flash video in particular. Ditto for those sites using Silverlight.

You seem to be saying that HTML5 can provide an effective lowest common denominator video playback experience. My point is that Adobe and Microsoft keep raising the floor as to what that lowest common denominator experience is, even for small corps.

I'm a small corporation. OVP A offers:

- adaptive streaming

- P2P

- multicasting

OVP B offers HTML5.

Why would I want B over A? Even if I'm a small fry, I still want adaptive - it provides the best possible experience to all viewers across a broad spectrum of computer and connection types. Why wouldn't I want P2P, or multicasting if I'm a big larger?

Jan
Posted By Mark Hayes on 9/8/2010 4:26:27 PM

Hi Jan, great rebuttal, but your comments about requirements address the needs of the media companies who rely on the advanced features that Flash offers.  True that today’s web has professional quality copyrighted material at one end of the spectrum, and UGC at the other.  There is a big middle ground where I believe a lot of the growth will take place.  Large enterprises are now aggressively building out video portals and both SME and SMB will follow.   When the HTML tools are available, the people building the sites will use the tools. 

 

I get that the public face of Kevin Lynch speaking company philosophy at a conference and what is said behind the scenes at Adobe are two different stories.  My point is, the GM in charge of Dreamweaver will do whatever it takes to make it worth $300 to whoever needs an HTML5 tool.  Maybe as a counterbalance they will put Flash players and widgets in there too.  Who knows?  My point is in 2 years there will be millions of HTML5 developers building video into websites.  Their clients may not need or want all the Flash features that a media client needs.  This is what I meant when I said “momentum shift”.

 

Performance is key and it will be interesting to see if/when and how they get hardware acceleration for HTML5.  Flash has just recently made progress with the chip vendors.  But H.264 acceleration is a given on devices today and Google says they have design commitments from WebM.  Again the market potential is huge so it has to be given consideration.
Posted By Jan Ozer on 9/8/2010 12:36:01 PM:

Hey Mark:

Thanks for your comment. I guess I fundamentally disagree that HTML5 will develop more quickly, for all the reasons that I've stated.

Adobe is going to follow the money (as they should), but don't mistake their vocal support for HTML5 as the true corporate intent. They're between a rock and a hard place with HTML5 - standards are like mom and apple pie - you can't dis them in public. I can assure you that the Flash team doesn't "love" HTML5 (just got briefed on some IBC announcements).

As for OVPs, of course they're going to support HTML5, why wouldn't they? But when (and why) should they start advising customers to cut over to HTML5? Would you pay more to address less than 50% of the market?

Even if the price the OVP charges is the same (with fallback to Flash, of course), at this point, we don't even know how the browsers will perform playing back H.264 and WebM - all my tests are pretty negative. You're assuming that they will be the same as Flash or better, assuming that feature parity with Flash will be there, assuming that HTML5-based ads won't be even more degrading to system performance than Flash, and that Javscript based advertisements won't be full of security holes.

In short, you're assuming that HTML5 will be "better" than Flash. I just can't make that assumption right now given the almost total lack of progress made on the video tag since 2004. Let's revisit your assumption after Adobe makes their announcements at IBC this year.

Jan

 
Posted By Mark Hayes on 9/8/2010 10:31:28 AM

 

Hi Jan,

You make some excellent points about HTML5's "market readiness", particularly when compared to Flash's feature set for video support.  

Let's acknowledge for a moment that HTML5 is a giant leap forward in browser features and that support for video at this time is primitive compared to the video support in Flash.  In order to provide perspective we also need to recall that Flash 5 was the first version that supported progressive download video and it was released in 2001, while Flash 6 which supported streaming video was released in 2002.  Adoption and tool development was relatively slow because Macromedia controlled the feature set in the tools and the client.

Fast forward to 2010.  We have HTML5, still in its infancy.  Sophisticated developers will continue to develop their video pages in Flash if they already know Action Script and need to implement the advanced features that Flash has to offer.  However HTML5 tooling is bound to progress at a rate that is significantly more aggressive than Flash tooling.  There are two factors here.  First, HTML5 being an open standard will enable many new companies to get into the business.  Second, the developer base for HTML is at least ten times greater than for ActionScript.  This makes for a much larger market opportunity.  

Even Adobe acknowledges this.  Kevin Lynch, Adobe’s CTO spoke at the Web 2.0 event earlier this summer and flat out said that Adobe plans to continue to make the best tools for web development, whether they are Flash or HTML.  Remember that Dreamweaver is a huge franchise for Adobe and a potentially much larger tool market than Flash if the HTML5 feature set is superior to competitive products.   Back in the day, Macromedia was able to command high prices for Dreamweaver when MSFT Front Page was basically free.

Interactive agencies with boatloads of ActionScript developers and ambitious, creative ideas will continue to push the envelope utilizing Flash.   Big media companies need ad insertion capabilities and analytics that only come with Flash today.  The economics of the market being what they are the smaller projects, under $200K will utilize OVPs anyway and OVPs will offer a choice of players that support both Flash and HTML5.   The role of the OVP here is to shield the developer and the end customer from having to worry about all of those implementation details and provide for deployment choices. 

So let me conclude by saying that it is my belief that feature parity for HTML5 when it comes to video is at least 3-4 years away.  However, because of the openness of HTML5 and the market size f the HTML development community, the momentum shift will occur much earlier.   
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