Monday, May 18, 2009

We've reached the limits with flash video

Flash video was great around 2002 (give or take a year) when it exploded through YouTube. Unfortunately, sites (like YouTube and Hulu) are now using it for what it probably was intended for. I run my monitor resolution at 1920 x 1200. And my computer is no slouch. But when I watch high definition or 720p flash video at full screen, I get about maybe 8 frames per second. On some sites I can say turn the Quality to Low, and get to around 20fps. And if my computer's cpu doesn't catch fire, I'm able to enjoy the program.

Unfortunately, some of these sites thought it would be cute to disable the changing of quality so the users wouldn't get confused and watch a video in low quality.

h.264 doesn't seem like its the way to go because it is usually associated to quicktime. And everyone knows that Apple intentionally retards Quicktime on the PC (no overlay, no fullscreen(gotta pay for this feature), horrible performance (it is 10 times slower than flash video for high res videos), just like Microsoft retards business applications on Microsoft Office for the Mac. No PC user in their right mind is going to pay for intentionally crippled version of Quicktime when there are things like VLC Player.

There is much better technology available to us. And I'm sure everyone has heard abuot Divx. DivX has an amazing streaming video plugin that unfortunately only one site on the internet uses (vreel.net which is plauged by ads) Isn't that terrible? We can have amazing streaming video, but we're stuck with this flash crap. It would be nice if adobe bought DivX and incorporated into their flash player. Sure it has nothing to do with flash, but at least adobe can make themselves look like geniuses by making it happen. And it'll be great. They can deliver streaming bluray quality. It has been available for at least 2 years.

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