For many years, browsers have relied on video reproduction to external plugins like Real Player, Quicktime, and Flash. Having 99 percent penetration of the market, Flash became a de facto standard for media playback; however, in the last few years, mobile devices have replaced this solution with native apps and HTML5 solutions.
HTML5 video surged to become a standard and elegant way to embed videos. While everything points to HTML5's video solution, the lack of agreement on which video formats should be supported has obstructed its use.
Ideally, there should be at least one format supported across all browsers, but every company has its own view on the matter. While Microsoft and Apple support MP4 H.264 (because they are patent holders of this format), Google and Mozilla back Ogg Theora and VP8 WebM as royalty-free solutions. The following table shows the browser support for each video format:
Browser |
Operative System |
Ogg Theora |
MP4 H.264 |
VP8 WebM |
---|---|---|---|---|
Internet Explorer... |