One would think with the 40 years of video computing and the recent strong movements towards Web 2 and RIA-Rich Intercface Applications, the dust would be settling and a few major video formats would be emerging in the marketplace. And you would be wrong.
Its a proprietary mess.
Now one can understand that the technology continues to move quickly on compression and delivery of video. However, the players are essentially the same – MPEG as the open standard, SWF+FLV as the leading and long standing proprietary formats of Adobe/Macromedia and the monopoly power of Windows Media Video-WMV. But at least you would expect the major video players and development tools to support the major formats. Well not exactly.
If you go here you will see that the table of the most popular video media players and their support for the most popular video file formats is really full of gaps and partial implementations. So is it any wonder when RIA and Web 2.0 vendors try to sell their wares and solutions – they come up against some wary IT shops and business resistance ?