I want embed a video in a webpage.
I don\'t want to use flash because it\'s unavailable for a huge number of platforms.
I\'m reluctant to use HTML5 becase it\'s not
I know it's a bit late, but did you have a look at VLC ?
It can be embedded in a website, runs on Windows, Mac OS & Linux, is free, open source, supports a lot of video/audio format...
The drawback is that it doesn't have a nice GUI with play/pause/set volume/ ... functions , you have to create them yourself.
You can have a look at this article: http://www.videolan.org/doc/play-howto/en/ch04.html#id310965