In the battle over the use of Adobe’s Flash technology on Apple’s mobile devices, Apple has prohibited Flash and promoted the use of the evolving HTML5 as an alternative. On Thursday, leading video site Hulu threw cold water on that position, saying it is updating its player using Flash, and HTML5 “doesn’t yet meet all of our customers’ needs.”
That observation by Eugene Wei, Hulu’s vice president of product, was part of a lengthy posting on Hulu’s blog. He also said that HTML5, in its present form, doesn’t provide the functionality that the popular site needs, including securing content, handling reporting to advertisers, using a high-performance codec for “premium visual quality,” and talking with the server to determine buffering and streaming bitrate.
Not All Sites ‘Have These Needs’
Wei noted that “not all video sites have these needs,” but they are important components, even contractual requirements, for Hulu. Hulu is owned by NBC Universal, News Corp., The Walt Disney Company, and others, and features a collection of current and classic TV shows and movies.
He pointed out that HTML5 could add those features in the future, or allow for easier implementation than currently. “Technology is a fast-moving space,” Wei wrote.
Given Hulu’s prominence in web video, Wei’s comments call into question whether HTML5 is currently a feasible alternative to Flash. Apple and Adobe Systems have been waging an increasingly heated battle over Apple’s refusal to allow the popular Flash technology on its mobile devices.
On Thursday, Adobe cofounders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke published an open letter on the company’s web site, accusing Apple of undermining “the next chapter of the web.” The letter came in response to a recent open letter by Apple CEO and cofounder Steve Jobs, justifying Apple’s decision against Flash and pointing to the open-source, standards-based HTML5 as an alternative. Unless…