Vimeo announced Tuesday’s (August 17th, 2010) release of it’s HTML5 video player for mobile devices. Dubbed the ‘Universal Player’, users will now be able to offer embeded code for a wider range of devices and mobile browsers. The Universal player will automatically detect the device viewing the video and choose the optimum player based on the device’s capabilities, according to a Vimeo press release. The player can detect what feed to send a device, SD for iPhone and Android, HD for iPads and Desktops. Vimeo can use the native player of the device or optimize the settings of mobile Flash and offer enhanced controls. The changes introduced by Vimeo allow HTML5 to be served to IE9 or WEBM video to Firefox. The goal may sound simple, make the user experience seamless, eliminate discrimination of devices and platforms and offer an optimized viewing experience based on your hardware configurations.
You can use the Vimeo Universal player starting today simply by using the embeded code as you normally would. Copy and paste the code from the sharing button from any vimeo video. You will have to replace old Vimeo embed code that you have used on your website but the old stuff will never stop working. Vimeo does offer a small Javascript snippet that you can add to your site that will automatically upgrade your old embeded code.
This is a welcomed step in the right direction. With the major players bickering about the staying power of Adobe Flash as a vehicle for streaming video content. It is nice to see a ‘universal’ approach to offer this content. Consumers don’t care whether they’re watching flash, HTML5 or which codec is being used. Just give them a seemless experience and keep the technology behind the scenes.