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Yes, Adpative bit-rate is currently missing from HTML5.

However, Apple has a method of doing this with entirely standard HTTP and a few metadata files, as this is how you do adaptive bitrate content on the iphone: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/Netw...

The formats and methods Apple provides in the spec for the IPhone can be used for both Live Content and for adaptive bit-rate pre-recorded content.

I hope eventually the iphone http streaming spec or a derivative would get adopted into HTML5 :)



Apple has one or more pending patents for it's (rather trivial) live streaming protocol and so far only agrees to RAND terms, see https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1142/ I have not seen a confirmation from Apple that it will offer royalty-free licenses if the protocol becomes a IETF standard. That should imho be a requirement for HTML5 adoption.

Also it may be better to adopt another streaming protocol for HTML5 because the Apple's protocol is not suitable for low latency streaming.


A patent over a metadata/playlist file and various bit rate chunks of a file?

Well, they don't disclose what the patent is, but bleh, its just stupid to patent crap like that :(


Yeah, we use Apple's spec in our own iPhone app. It would be very nice to see it, or something like it, in HTML5.




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