Microsoft Sides With Apple on HTML5 Video [UPD]

While Apple has been vocal about its push towards using HTML5 for video playback and leaving Flash out in the cold, Microsoft has quietly been keeping a similar stance.

Microsoft GM for Internet Explorer, Dean Hachamovitch, posted a note on the MSDN detailing what the plans are for browser video formats in IE9. Interestingly, Microsoft agrees with Apple, as it feels that the "The future of the web is HTML5."

Internet Explorer 9 will support HTML5 video playback encoded in H.264 only, matching up with the current support offered by Safari and Chrome. Those with the right hardware will also get GPU-acceleration, as previously demonstrated by Nvidia in a video here.

Even more interesting is that Microsoft seems to be motivated by certain weaknesses of Flash in its effort transition to HTML5 video. Hachamovitch notes, "Flash does have some issues, particularly around reliability, security, and performance."

Check out the full post below:

HTML5 VideoThere’s been a lot of posting about video and video formats on the web recently. This is a good opportunity to talk about Microsoft’s point of view.The future of the web is HTML5. Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C. HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design. The HTML5 specification describes video support without specifying a particular video format. We think H.264 is an excellent format. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only.H.264 is an industrystandard, with broad and strong hardware support. Because of this standardization, you can easily take what you record on a typical consumer video camera, put it on the web, and have it play in a web browser on any operating system or device with H.264 support (e.g. a PC with Windows 7). Recently, we publicly showed IE9 playing H.264-encoded video from YouTube. You can read about the benefits of hardware acceleration here, or see an example of the benefits at the 26:35 mark here. For all these reasons, we’re focusing our HTML5 video support on H.264.Other codecs often come up in these discussions. The distinction between the availability of source code and the ownership of the intellectual property in that available source code is critical. Today, intellectual property rights for H.264 are broadly available through a well-defined program managed by MPEG LA. The rights to other codecs are often less clear, as has been described in the press. Of course, developers can rely on the H.264 codec and hardware acceleration support of the underlying operating system, like Windows 7, without paying any additional royalty. Today, video on the web is predominantly Flash-based. While video may be available in other formats, the ease of accessing video using just a browser on a particular website without using Flash is a challenge for typical consumers. Flash does have some issues, particularly around reliability, security, and performance. We work closely with engineers at Adobe, sharing information about the issues we know of in ongoing technical discussions. Despite these issues, Flash remains an important part of delivering a good consumer experience on today’s web.Dean Hachamovitch General Manager, Internet Explorer

UPDATE: Microsoft has come under some criticism for its support of H.264 and only H.264 for its HTML5 video implementation, specifically regarding the future of the codec and when the free license expires in 2016. Hachamovitch has followed up with another blog post in response, which can be found right here.