YouTube now defaults to HTML5 video

What joy it is to finally uninstall Flash. The last time I was this happy to uninstall crappy software was when I realized that I no longer needed RealPlayer.<p>For those that don&#x27;t know it, RealPlayer was a very popular proprietary media player (with its own proprietary formats) circa 2000. The company&#x27;s stock was worth $380 a share in 2000; it&#x27;s now worth $6.<p>The only explanation for RealPlayer&#x27;s popularity was its DRM I think; lots of commercial users wanted the DRM.<p>But it got more bloated with every release, and I had to go through its countless option settings every time I updated it to disable all the sneaky ways they came up with to violate user privacy. I&#x27;m relieved that we no longer need either Flash or RealPlayer.

What I especially like about the HTML5 player is the ability to change the playback speed. It is extremely useful for watching lectures &amp; talks.

&gt; we can support multiple content protection technologies on different platforms with a single set of assets, making YouTube play faster and smoother.<p>Man this line is hilarious. Your DRM to block users from keeping the videos you are sending them is not making the experience faster <i>or</i> smoother. Don&#x27;t try to pass off user-hostile proprietary blobs restricting the data on their computer as anything but a terrible blow to a free and open Internet.<p>You can say, &quot;yay drm&quot;, but say &quot;yay drm&quot;, not &quot;yay drm, bullshit about faster and smoother&quot;. At least own up to the fact you are crippling UX for personal gain.

Excellent. It&#x27;s always been weird having a mobile device run YouTube more responsively than an GBP1500 laptop because the latter had to run the Flash plugin.

Hooray! I delete all cookies on session end and I don&#x27;t have flash installed. Having to remember to go to youtube.com&#x2F;html5 every time I start a new session has been frustrating.<p>Also, the HTML5 player has a nice feature to change the rate at which the video plays, which makes watching long talks a lot easier.

The HTML5 player is fantastic and I have been using it for as long as I can remember (since it became an option). My favourite feature is the playback speed controls, when trying to learn a song on guitar, I can follow along with the live performance or tutorial to learn how to play, absolutely invaluable.<p>Every day the number of reasons to keep Flash installed gets lower and lower. I still keep it installed on my machine for the occasional site that still uses it, but Flash&#x27;s days are definitely numbered. When a site as big as Youtube stops using it, that is when you know there isn&#x27;t long left. Fortunately Adobe realised HTML5 is the future a while ago and have been creating some great tools.

Wait - so youtube is behind the porn industry by only 4.5 years?<p><a href="http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/flash_takes_a_blow_as_porn_industry_backs_html_5" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macobserver.com&#x2F;tmo&#x2F;article&#x2F;flash_takes_a_blow_as...</a>

I&#x27;ve kept Flash around for the oddball site here and there that still requires it, but this week I decided to uninstall rather than patch it[1].<p>[1] - <a href="https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/flash-player/apsa15-01.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;helpx.adobe.com&#x2F;security&#x2F;products&#x2F;flash-player&#x2F;apsa1...</a>

HTML 5 videos on youtube take forever to start for me and would just stay at a buffering screen when I use the seekbar. This is in Chrome. I haven&#x27;t tried another browser but it has made my youtube experience terrible compared to what is use to be with Flash.

Click to play now doesn&#x27;t work in Chrome, anyone have a workaround or a known-working extensions for click-to-play for html5 youtube?

Now I have to figure out how to fix HTML5 audio. For some reason it always uses the wrong alsa sound device, even though Flash and all my other apps use the right one. This is how I fixed it for all the other media:<p><pre><code> ~$ cat .asoundrc pcm.!default { type hw card 1 } ctl.!default { type hw card 1 } </code></pre> Also, I just checked the site and it&#x27;s still using Flash for me in Firefox 35.0 (???) <i>edit</i> Ah, they do it for Beta versions of Firefox.

Make that HTML with DRM and non standard &amp; non-portable extensions.<p>I think I actually prefer a working, portable Flash-based solution to that.<p>In not sure which are worst: Netflix and Google for pushing this bullshit into the browser &amp; standard or uneducated users for swallowing it whole.

Sorry dudes. This is not killing Flash. Last time I checked, porn sites were still using it.

That&#x27;s great. Now for HTML5 support in all the streaming platforms for live streams. That&#x27;s going to be another nail in the flash coffin. And it will do wonders for integrating the delivery to both web and mobile clients from the same sources.

Am I the only one that noticed: &quot;&lt;h2&gt; Moving to &lt;iframe&gt; embeds&lt;&#x2F;h2&gt;&quot; I&#x27;m not entirely sure if it&#x27;s a little joke or genuine mistake?<p>Regardless, this is absolutely great. I haven&#x27;t had flash for a while now and so it makes me happy to feel that HTML5 really is a valid replacement for most things.

Now if only Facebook did the same, I could finally use Safari without switching to iPad mode!

Uninstalled Flash Player with an evil laugh on my home iMac only to reinstall it when my kid&#x27;s games needed it. What is the alternative to flash for games that run on PBS Kids, etc. ?

This is really interesting news and I think signals what will be a really large change in digital video in the next few years.<p>Moving from flash to HTML5 adaptive bitrate is not trivial task and if you are familiar with MSE&#x2F;EME, it shows how powerful the browser has become in delivering rich video content, either pre-recorded or live streaming.<p>With this, it seems to me there is a big gap now for encoding to new adaptive codecs, like MPEG-DASH and tooling to make something like livestreaming easy to do without flash.

Well, now I can delete Chrome.

&gt; Encrypted Media Extensions and Common Encryption - In the past, the choice of delivery platform (Flash, Silverlight, etc) and content protection technology (Access, PlayReady) were tightly linked, as content protection was deeply integrated into the delivery platform and even the file format. Encrypted Media Extensions separate the work of content protection from delivery, enabling content providers like YouTube to use a single HTML5 video player across a wide range of platforms. Combined with Common Encryption, we can support multiple content protection technologies on different platforms with a single set of assets, making YouTube play faster and smoother.<p>Has any streaming platform actually rolled out an implementation of this? And has anyone found a way to break it?

Next up (I hope): Twitch.<p>Then I think I&#x27;m done with that extension.

I&#x27;ve disabled Flash since the beginning of this year, an idea inspired by someone else [1]. So far it&#x27;s been working out great and I was pleasantly surprised I&#x27;ve had very little need to turn it back on.<p>Some notable issues I&#x27;ve run into:<p>- play.spotify.com, I used to use the web player on my computer, it requires flash sadly. I&#x27;ve started using their OS X app.<p>- twitch.tv if I occasionally watch a stream, also needs flash. I tend to turn it on for the duration.<p>It&#x27;s pretty great and I&#x27;m enjoying better battery life, more efficient use of cpu.<p>[1] <a href="https://twitter.com/shurcool/status/550804694793060354" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;shurcool&#x2F;status&#x2F;550804694793060354</a>

Now if they only defaulted to theatre mode. I don&#x27;t care about the related videos as much as they think I do, and there&#x27;s still room for a few once they get shifted underneath the larger player.

Steve Jobs predicted this in 2010 - <a href="https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;hotnews&#x2F;thoughts-on-flash&#x2F;</a>

I have flash set to &quot;click to play&quot; so flash videos only load when I click on them. I dislike the HTML5 because it means videos always autoplay. I hate autoplaying video.

Hah, the player is the least of my issues with the service. And I hope this means they won&#x27;t get rid of the Flash option altogether.

People are pointing out how every site will now (optionally) need its own DRM module. So how is this not a worse situation for users than Flash? Now there will be several popular modules that will all have their own vulnerabilities, and need patching, with the added disadvantage that they don&#x27;t all have the same set of eyes watching them, as Flash does now.

By the way, is MPEG-DASH* patent encumbered or not? I didn&#x27;t find clear answer on that. Youtube is using DASH (on the server side) to implement adaptive streaming.<p>* <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_ove...</a>

This leaves the BBC as one of the few major sites still dependent on flash for desktop users. Ironic considering you&#x27;d expect it to be at the forefront of video delivery technology. I use IE&#x27;s Developer Tools to request the site as an iPad, a much better experience.

Now if only Twitter would eliminate the Flash dependency to show animated GIFs on Firefox...

Wow, I almost forgot that I was using HTML5 version of youtube as a preview. I am using HTML5 preview since day 1 and I don&#x27;t remember any glitches or bugs. I wonder why this switch has taken so long given many upsides and no known downside.

I love the trend of &quot;Let&#x27;s fix technology. With more technology!&quot; The constant one-up-manship and the preposterous amount of options of all these tech companies makes me yearn for the days of DOS.

HTML 5, Flash or Silverlight?<p><a href="http://www.xul.fr/en/html5/html5-flash-silverlight.php" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.xul.fr&#x2F;en&#x2F;html5&#x2F;html5-flash-silverlight.php</a>

I just hope they don&#x27;t remove flash support anytime soon.

How does this affect the mobile experience? Is viewing on an iPad &#x2F; iPhone HTML5 by default? The article only really mentions the main desktop browsers.

Seems like it isn&#x27;t perfect yet. At least on Firefox I don&#x27;t get to watch videos in 1080p anymore on Youtube with the HTML5 player.

The smoother way for me to watch (at least some) youtube videos is youtube-dl and mplayer; otherwise I get a lot of &quot;buffering&quot;.

That&#x27;s fine and well, but maybe Google can tell now why they very quietly cancelled YouTube Feather. It was the best way to avoid comments. It stopped working some day, and Google was supposedly working on a fix. A few weeks later, it was removed completely. Since then, radio silence.<p><a href="http://productforums.google.com/d/topic/youtube/Eae53c5AI5U" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;productforums.google.com&#x2F;d&#x2F;topic&#x2F;youtube&#x2F;Eae53c5AI5U</a>

I still see its asking for flash if plugin is available, with firefox flash plugin on ask to activate mode.

Been using html5 youtube for a while now, it&#x27;s still pretty damn slow on my french ISP.

from the same post,what about this I found in the comments? <a href="https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=234779" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;code.google.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;chromium&#x2F;issues&#x2F;detail?id=234779</a>

I just went to YouTube but I get the Flash version.

Zoom in Safari is still kinda broken: <a href="http://imgur.com/8pBmWpm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;8pBmWpm</a><p>Also Google Maps seriously lags on Safari. Do not like it.

Took you long enough. One less Firefox addon, I guess.

That&#x27;s a good news!

Good.

Finally.

About damn time.

Numerous observers have shown that H.265 is better than VP9 on the quality&#x2F;efficiency curve. But Google does not like to pay for real research and prefer to found alternative &quot;free&quot; copy-pasta codecs it controls.<p><a href="http://iphome.hhi.de/marpe/download/Performance_HEVC_VP9_X264_PCS_2013_preprint.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;iphome.hhi.de&#x2F;marpe&#x2F;download&#x2F;Performance_HEVC_VP9_X26...</a><p><a href="http://fr.slideshare.net/touradj_ebrahimi/spie2014-hev-cvsvp9" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fr.slideshare.net&#x2F;touradj_ebrahimi&#x2F;spie2014-hev-cvsvp...</a><p>edit: facts will get you downvoted on HN. Nice.