HTML 5 <video> tag vs Flash video. What are the pros and cons?

Question

IMPORTANT UPDATE

This question was made over 9 years ago. It made sense then, it doesn\'t make it now. Flash is hard on its way out; sup

Answer 1

Pros:

• Ogg/Theora/Vorbis is royalty-free for all parties is the chain (the H.264 grace period for hosting H.264 ends at the end of 2015 and encoding and decoding are already subject to royalty)
• Once fallback for IE is no longer necessary, will be easier than Flash
• No need for the plug-in prison—browser vendors can fix their own bugs
• Integrates with CSS effects
• Integrates with SVG effects
• Integrates with JavaScript
• Can be ported to any platform without permission from Adobe
• User can save the video to disk easily
• Can be made work safely in syndication feeds (but software not ready yet)

Cons:

• IE support for the video element has to wait until IE9; current IE-compatible Ogg fallback renderer relies on Java until the ActiveX solution or the Silverlight solution is finalized
• Safari needs XiphQT to play Ogg, because Apple hasn't shipped Theora.
• Royalty-encumbered format needed with the iPhone (but no worse than Flash)
• Can't go full-screen in every desktop implementation shipping today