iPlayer boss, Erik Huggers, has taken to his blog to defend the BBC’s penchant for Flash and give HTML 5 the boot. He says the Beeb uses the Adobe format on merit but commenters continue to grumble that the corporation has made exceptions for Apple with alternative iPhone and iPad iPlayer versions. If you’ve been hoping for an HTML5 iPlayer soon, you’re out of luck…
On his blog, Hugger says: “Our use of Flash is not a case of BBC favouritism, rather it currently happens to be the most efficient way to deliver a high quality experience to the broadest possible audience.” We know at least one man down Cupertino way who wouldn’t agree with that.
Huggers goes on to give HTML5 a big of battering. He says: “The fact is there’s still a lot of work to be done on HTML5 before we can integrate it fully into our products. As things stand I have concerns about HTML5’s ability to deliver on the vision of a single open browser standard.”
The BBC man claims HTML5 is too tied up in a row about standards and claims the pace of innovation around the format is slowing. His lukewarm view on HTML5 is in sharp contrast to the glowing praise delivered by web video provider Brightcove earlier this year. It reckons the format is on course to kill off Flash completely.
What Huggers doesn’t address in his post is the issue of piracy and reassuring content owners. The iPhone and iPad iPlayer implementations use HTML5 to deliver H.264 and AAC streams to Apple devices which can’t do anything but watch them (unless you jailbreak your device). Currently securing an HTML5 iPlayer for every device would prove tricky.
With Android 2.2 Froyo bringing full Flash support to more Android devices, the number of Google OS lovers feeling aggrieved about struggling with iPlayer on their mobile will be reduced. But not everyone is getting Flash on their phone and anger about Apple seemingly getting special dispensation is sure to continue to simmer.
Let us know: how to do you watch iPlayer? Are you annoyed by the Beeb’s take on HTML5 and offering iPlayer on more devices?
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