It has been possible for some time now (since the release of Flash Player 9.0.115 in December ‘07) to play High Definition (HD) video using Flash. This is due to it’s support of the H.264 video codec (a standard for encoding videos).

However, few mainstream video websites have taken advantage of this - probably due to the larger video files that are needed and the average speed of a users broadband connection making them slow to download. That is, until recently. Back in December, YouTube announced full support for HD on their site, allowing users to upload HD videos. Then, just this week, both BBC iPlayer and the Amazon Video on Demand service announced that they are also offering an HD option.

This is great news, as web video has been tradionally dismissed due to it’s poor quality. Now with these big players adopting HD format, we can start using it for our own projects. Users will become increasingly familiar with great quality video on the web, shifting the opinion towards it.

This is also good news for the education sector, meaning they can start to put more and more video online, instead of sending out DVDs. This will make it easier (and cheaper) to deliver content to even more people.