[LAU] Off topic - Bluegrass for boys!

[Leigh Dyer]

On 6/07/13 4:38 AM, david wrote:
> Doesn't play here on Debian Sid Linux with Firefox 22. Displays message:
> " It appears that we are unable to play this video in your browser for
> one of the following reasons:
>
>      you have JavaScript disabled
>      your device does not support HTML5 video
>      you have an old version of the Adobe Flash Player. Download the
> latest Flash player to view this video."
>
> IIRC, HMTL5 video support is very dependent on video drivers: one great
> disadvantage compared to good old proprietary Flash.
>
It shouldn't be dependent on drivers, but not all browsers that support 
HTML5 video (or audio, for that matter) will play all HTML5 videos. 
Different browsers support different codecs, and while Chrome, Safari, 
and IE support proprietary codecs like H.264 and AAC, Firefox supports 
only free codecs, like Theora, VP8 (aka WebM) and Vorbis.

So, while Firefox mostly works with HTML5 video on Youtube (since Google 
supports WebM there for many videos), most other sites only offer H.264 
video via HTML5, which won't work with Firefox. Most of those sites will 
fall back to using Flash to play such videos on Firefox if it's 
available, though.

Thanks
Leigh