Any idea when this happened? I only noticed a few days ago and there doesn't seem to be any official announcements or even blog posts about the switch.
I think they used to prompt you to install Flash if you didn't have it too, which it didn't seem to do earlier this week, just played adverts and content via HTML5/H.254 (in IE11) and HTML5/VP8 in Firefox.
After this the next step is probably to start delivering HTML5 in preference to FLash, where possible. Wonder what the plan is for that transition?
No, I hadn't noticed it until testing it for that comment (actually I didn't notice an ad started playing for the first video I clicked on and even the ad itself was webm), though I do feel like I've gotten almost all html5 videos for a while now (I have click to play on for plugins, so the ones that are ready to go stand out).
> After this the next step is probably to start delivering HTML5 in preference to FLash, where possible. Wonder what the plan is for that transition?
Notably, if you go to the html5 youtube page (http://www.youtube.com/html5) in incognito mode in Chrome, it actually says "The HTML5 player is currently used when possible", so I assume this is the default now. That isn't the case in Firefox, where the option to request the html5 player to be the default is still there. Maybe it's a vp9 thing? I don't believe Firefox has included vp9 yet (and the player says: 'codecs="vp8.0, vorbis"')
Ah that's interesting. I actually opted out of HTML5 to see what would happen, but only in Firefox.
Firefox does have VP9, but it doesn't yet have the MSE (Media Source Extension) support that YouTube requires to deliver VP9, though a semi-functional version is available behind a preference in the nightly builds.
I think they used to prompt you to install Flash if you didn't have it too, which it didn't seem to do earlier this week, just played adverts and content via HTML5/H.254 (in IE11) and HTML5/VP8 in Firefox.
After this the next step is probably to start delivering HTML5 in preference to FLash, where possible. Wonder what the plan is for that transition?