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

My belief for pros:

• It's catching the HTML standard up to the current practical uses of the web.
• It seems like it would be easier/better to get mobile devices to support the video/audio tag rather than porting Flash to the devices.
• Ogg is an open standard, while Adobe controls Flash.
• I've already seen in some places people putting up solutions to have a fall through, meaning if your browser doesn't support video/audio tags, it will use flash.
• Easier interaction with standard HTML elements and javascript.

My biggest con would be that Ogg is a bit behind in terms of compression and quality. But I would imagine it's being worked on. More importantly, if more people start adopting it, more people will likely join the the work on Ogg to make it better.

Competition is key as well, as there is no major player forcing Adobe to really do anything with Flash. So Adobe can control the market in terms of video content on the web.