Flash has 85% market share and the iPad isn’t going to move everyone to HTML 5 and H.264 video

Time Warner and NBC pass on iPad

Steve Job’s visions of world domination may will likely wither in the heat of summer this year. He wants everyone to dump Adobe Flash for the new HTML 5 and H.264 video standards.

Sounds great eh? First it’s impossible. 85% of the videos on the web are Flash. Think about the cost of converting all those libraries if you wanted to do it.

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I’ve been looking and there are no cheap solutions.

NBC and Time Warner figured that out and will pass on the chance to make Steve Jobs richer. Their statement is not the end-all-and-be-all. Neither NBC nor Time-Warner are technology leaders.

“When the iPad bandwagon was launched in late January, ABC and Netflix quickly jumped onboard with tailor-made apps, while CBS and others started transitioning their content to HTML5-compliant formats, all in the name of not being left behind by the revolution. As it turns out, however, some content providers will be letting this ride pass them by, at least for the moment. The New York Post today reports that big media heavyweights Time Warner and NBC Universal have turned their noses up at the iPad’s high entry demands and will be sticking to what works:

Sources said several large media companies, including Time Warner and NBC Universal, told Apple they won’t retool their extensive video libraries to accommodate the iPad, arguing that such a reformatting would be expensive and not worth it because Flash dominates the Web.

According to the NYP article, these conglomerates have been emboldened by the forthcoming arrival of competing tablets from the likes of Dell and HP, and will be seeking their fortunes in the mobile space atop Adobe’s winged stallion of web domination that we commonly know as Flash. This is a decision sure to end in tears — we just don’t know who’ll be doing the crying when it all shakes out.” Engadget.

Expensive license fees for H.264

The patents for H.264 – isn’t that a bizarre name for a wannabe household name – are held by a consortium of people including Microsoft, Google and Apple. Unlike Flash which has no fees attached to users or sites, H.264 charges up to $2 million per year to use their technology on a commercial website. Fees work on some undisclosed sliding scale but any ads on your site means “commercial.”

Nero, the make of DVD authoring software, is suing the H.264 rights holders.

H.264 is a pig

If you think Flash is slow, try H.264. Except for YouTube who have optimized their videos, the new “standard” takes more computer resources to run slower than Flash.  The HTML browser standard which will run these movies is “future ware”.

Jobs may have over-reached himself. Time will tell.

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