Reinhart’s “Flash-first” video delivery

Ok, so since we finally got way from animated GIFs and the <blink> tag, Flash has been the preferred, near-universal delivery platform for video online for more than a few years now.  With Steve Jobs’ continued insistence that Flash is the cause of all that is evil, us making sites for mobile have had to face a hard choice.  Develop with the burgeoning HTML5 for the iPad/Pod or develop with Flash for the rest of the world. 


The basic problem is choosing either method cuts out a large part of the potential viewership.  28% of the smartphones out there are iPhones, and therefore won’t support Flash, (versus 40% that does.)  And HTML5 only has a penetration rate between 40-60% on Mac and PC, making it a no-go currently as well.  What’s a developer to do?  Ignore iMobile, or the ~50% of people that can’t handle HTML5?



At the 2010 Flashbelt conference in Minneapolis, Robert Reinhart presented his elegant solution implemented here for handling them all.  With simple browser detection, we can create a video player that will allow video to be streamed to all browsers, on all OS’s, and on all devices.  Sexy right?

Basically we’d script it thusly:

• If the browser has Flash-enabled, play the video using Flash Dynamic RTMP Streaming.  Phew 98% of browsers, and majority of video-ready phones… done.
• Else, if the user has a mobile device, display the HTML5 player with adaptive HTTP streaming.  Boom. iPad, iPod, and any mobile devices that haven’t fully implemented Flash yet… totally covered.

Personally I love it, anyone out there have any thoughts?

By the way, Reinhart can found @flashfreaker and at

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