What just happened to video on the web?
That's a question you should ask with the announcement we made tonight. I think a lot will change. This is probably one of my longest and information packed posts ever, but I think it is important we put down all cards on the table.
Context & Ripple Effects
Adobe has put H.264 and full high-definition playback into its Flash Player — the code name is Moviestar, announced on kaourantin.net on August 21, 2007 — meaning the plugin that already dominates web video can now carry broadcast-quality streams without a second player or codec install. The pickup was unusually broad for a player update: InfoWorld, CNET, NewTeeVee, Read/WriteWeb, Beet.TV and The Universal Desktop all ran the story the same day, a signal that distributors saw this as an infrastructure shift rather than a release note.
The announcement lands mid-arc in online video's scaling debate. Valleywag's reality-check chart on online video in May had already framed distribution cost as the industry's open wound, and Adobe's own post frames the move defensively as much as technically — CNET's writeup leads with Adobe attacking open-source alternatives, indicating management sees codec politics, not just playback quality, as the battleground.
First-order effects
- Content owners and video sites built on Flash can upgrade existing embeds to H.264/HD output without asking viewers to install anything, collapsing the quality gap between Flash video and dedicated desktop players.
- On2, whose VP6 codec was the incumbent inside Flash, faces its flagship distribution channel being opened to a competing licensed format on Adobe's own runtime.
Second-order effects
- Sites weighing Microsoft's Silverlight against Flash lose their main differentiator argument on video quality, forcing the comparison onto tooling and developer ecosystem instead.
- H.264 adoption through Flash pulls every major web-video operator into MPEG LA's royalty structure, sharpening the split with backers of royalty-free open-source codecs that Adobe is publicly dismissing.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, web video consolidates around a single proprietary runtime controlled by one vendor with a licensed codec underneath it — a structural dependency that any future standards effort, such as an open browser-native video path, would have to displace.
- Codec selection becomes a strategic lever rather than an engineering detail, giving whoever controls the dominant player de facto authority over the web's video format stack.
The trend: Web video is standardizing around a proprietary player-plus-licensed-codec stack rather than open formats, concentrating format control in a single vendor's hands.