Hulu Developing Non-Flash Player for Deployment on iPad?

[doug in albq]

Here are sites from that list that work on the iPhone, not off the top of my head, but actually verified.

EPSN redirects to m.espn.go.com/wireless/index?w=197wt&i=COM
eBay redirects to iphone.ebay.com
USPS redirects to mobile.usps.com/iphone
UPS redirects to ups.com/content/us/en/index.jsx?flash=false
Weather.com redirects to mw.weather.com

The only possible exception is
FedEx, whose full site works, aside from the Flash-based self-ad called their "Promotions Center"

mobile versions of those sites suck...especially for a quad-core 1gzh custom chip attached to a near 10 inch screen. Those mobile sites are less than a great internet experience, and far LESS than a current average user gets on older, average computing devices. I'm calling fail.

 

[cmaier]

mobile versions of those sites suck...especially for a quad-core 1gzh custom chip attached to a near 10 inch screen. Those mobile sites are less than a great internet experience, and far LESS than a current average user gets on older, average computing devices. I'm calling fail.

Who says quad core?

 

[SactoGuy18]

Since Hulu is already streaming H.264 video, all they need is a different streaming "wrapper" to make it iPad compatible. In short, it won't take much for Hulu to make the leap to iPad compatibility.

 

[gigi1701]

I would count myself as a "web developer", and frankly I don't see Flash as being an integral part of "the web". It's not standards-based, it's not open, it doesn't produce accessible sites, it costs a fortune for the development tools, it's a kludgey proprietary hack that has been forcibly welded onto the actual web -- why should we bemoan its possible demise? If you want a true web that isn't crippled, get rid of Flash, and work towards a web where such interactivity is provided by a standard that everyone can use.

Regardless of Apple's true motives, I think that here they're on the side of the (long-term) angels, and I hope we see the day that they refused to put Flash on the iPhone as similar to the day they refused to put a floppy drive in the iMac.

Agreed, me too. I don't do much in Flash, I have some slideshows and video content that I am looking for other options for viewing. I do have a few Flash animations and I am hoping that SGV makes a come back. I never developed whole sites in Flash, what a total pain to do that. Give me good CSS over that any day. And truthfully, just because you can animate something doesn't mean you should. I won't miss Flash at all, looking forward to the more open alternatives.

 

[The Phazer]

Adobe hasn't shown the interest or capability to improve Flash in any substantial way, so I wouldn't count on them.

Yes they have. Though part of the problem is Apple's refusal to open up some graphics APIs in OSX to enable hardware accessibility - at the moment they're kept private to Quicktime.

Windows doesn't do that with WMP - because they are quite aware they'd get the book thrown at them by the competition authorities. Is Apple's strategy for this stuff really just to hope OSX retains crappy market share so they don't get in regulalatory trouble?

Phazer

 

[Journojulz]

Nope, they hope that their market share will GROW so:

• legit video streamers will move away from flash,
• ad companies will replace flash buttons
• flash developers will turn their swizzy designs into apps.

In the end, they hope the market will follow the buzz and the marketers will follow the money.

punters don't love flash - they love what flash can do
and when there is an alternative - they really won't know its gone

eg youtube

 

[macintoshtoffy]

What is required now is for Microsoft to come out and put their backing behind the video tag and use of h264 in Internet Explorer thus leaving Firefox and Opera both too lazy to support the new video standard (and who cares about them anyway, bot of their browsers are horrible). The day when that happens will be the day when YouTube and Hulu can finally get rid of Flash for good.

As for 'Flash developers' - I have no sympathy or sorrow for them - they bought it upon themselves with their horrible websites, crappy applications and their flashing CPU hogging advertisements. As the old joke goes; what do you call 10,000 Flash developers tied to the ocean floor? a good start.

 

[Maserati7200]

Umm.. the article stated it was more important in one direction and I said it was the opposite.

Nobody said that it did not go both ways.

The reality, though, is Hulu needs to make themselves as available to as many viewers as possible as opposed to Apple who will be relatively unscathed if hulu is not accessible from the iPad.

I believe it does go both ways. Being able to watch Hulu is a huge incentive to buy the iPad. Many people, including myself, would not but an iPad without being able to access Hulu, I do that all the time on my laptop. And for the people who will buy the iPad and don't care that it doesn't have Hulu, if it does have Hulu, they will be more likely to go there.

 

[SactoGuy18]

Nope, they hope that their market share will GROW so:

• legit video streamers will move away from flash,
• ad companies will replace flash buttons
• flash developers will turn their swizzy designs into apps.

In the end, they hope the market will follow the buzz and the marketers will follow the money.

Apple holds over US$30 BILLION in liquid assets right now. How about spending about US$2 billion of that to provide assistance funds and to offer tools to convert Flash-enabled web pages to HTML 5.0 web pages and help companies convert Flash video streaming to H.264 or Ogg Theora video streaming? Apple could win a LOT of converts that way.

 

[Peace]

Apple holds over US$30 BILLION in liquid assets right now. How about spending about US$2 billion of that to provide assistance funds and to offer tools to convert Flash-enabled web pages to HTML 5.0 web pages and help companies convert Flash video streaming to H.264 or Ogg Theora video streaming? Apple could win a LOT of converts that way.

H.264 is the mpeg-4 Codec. Almost every media company now encodes their video in H.264.

Flash video is a container that streams H.264 video. Anybody that makes a Flash file or *.flv already knows how to encode h.264.