Since last week's announcement of the YouTube and Vimeo beta versions which use HTML5's element, the Mozilla developers have been defending the fact that Firefox 3.6 cannot play the content on these betas even though it supports HTML5. The reason for the problem is that the HTML5 working groups decided not to specify which video codecs the tag would support.

One week after Google open sourced its $124.6m VP8 video codec, Mozilla and Opera have called for its inclusion in the still-gestating HTML5 specification. As it stands, the HTML5 spec does not specify a video codec. Browser makers are free to use any codec they like, and the big names are split between the patent-backed H.264 and the open source Ogg Theora.

You've heard all of the advantages that HTML5 brings to your web experience, but how far away are we from enjoying the benefits of HTML5? With several browsers already supporting HTML5 video, I selected Google Chromium which was available for my Ubuntu 10.04 desktop and gave it a try.

HTML is basically a standard for structuring and presenting content in the internet and HTML5 is the newest incarnation of HTML. HTML5 is supposed to have features like video playback which currently depends upon third-party(and proprietary) browser plug-ins like Adobe Flash.

Google will soon make its VP8 video codec open source, we’ve learned from multiple sources. The company is scheduled to officially announce the release at its Google I/O developers conference next month, a source with knowledge of the announcement said.

YouTube have announced a beta of HTML5 support. These are broadcasting videos in H.264 format for browsers that understand HTML5's tag. The choice of H.264 is perhaps unsurprising, since that's what Apple's iPhone supports natively (and indeed, is how the YouTube mobile application is rendered). This means that other browsers that don't support H.264 won't be able to render content.

Apple and Microsoft join to fight Opera and Firefox. The next big evolution of the Internet will be in the realm of video playing. Until now the rapid growth of online video has been built on Adobe's Flash technology. Flash has always been a workable solution but not the best platform because it requires an additional plugin to be installed before users can view video.

Adobe has rolled out an HTML5 development kit and announced that Flash will use Google's freshly open sourced VP8 video codec. The company wants you to know that despite its tussle with Steve Jobs, it very much believes in web standards.

YouTube and Vimeo is kicking Adobe's Flash to the curb in favor of the sharp new HTML5. Both YouTube and Vimeo have announced that they are launching HTML5-based players on their video streaming sites, thus booting out the long-standing champ of multimedia delivery, Adobe Flash.