Metropol

So.... Youtube is prompting me (and by that I assume everyone) to try out the experimental new HTML5 video.

YouTube HTML5 Video Player

This is an opt-in experiment for HTML5 support on YouTube. If you are using a supported browser, you can choose to use the HTML5 player instead of the Flash player for most videos. Your comments will help us improve and perfect the mixtures that we're working on. So jump in, play around and send your feedback directly to the brains behind the scenes.

Does this replace Flash video in some way, or is it merely a different wrapper of the same delivery method?

Boffins, its over to you.

The headline (and the bit that is relevant to YouTube) is its a new Video tag - the problem is there is no standard codec so different browsers are able to implement whatever codec they choose.
Its supposed to be a replacement for flash video however I don't think its going to catch on soon.

1. Flash video and Silverlight allow drm which will keep the movie companies happy. (not that its hard to download flash video etc)
2. There are still a lot of people using IE6 - they will not upgrade their browser to allow for the new format. Saying that if youtube decides to pick a codec everyone will pretty much follow.
3. some of the codecs in use are not supported natively using hardware (that's why there is a youtube app on the iphone - it uses a different video format that allows hardware decoding)

Apple and Google favour H.264 while Mozilla and Opera favour Ogg Theora - Microsoft does not support html5 properly yet and has not decided on a codec.

The licensing for H.264 is quite expensive and is very odd- end users can become liable for the licence to code and decode the content in certain circumstances (Its an extreme example of the licensing in place and not likely to happen)

H.264 hardware decoding is also on a lot of devices out in the wild already.

Incidentally, YouTube will cease to support IE6 from 13th March,

Also, Ogg Thedora was based on an old version of On2's codec (which has been improved five times sinse). On2 has just been bought by google with the rumour being they intend to open source the codec thus solving the issue.