Why aren't more videos in XYZ format?

This is a very difficult issue and it's unfortunate that it is. We want everyone to be able to view all the content we provide. In an effort to do this we try and go with open standards whenever possible. In this respect, we choose MPEG-4 because it is the next version of the most widely accepted video format, MPEG. MPEG is supported by every major video player. It was only after we made this choice that we discovered that Microsoft has refused to support MPEG-4, even the most recent versions of their media player. This is incredibly disappointing to us because we are consistantly able to get both high quality compression and small filesize with MPEG-4.

We are looking into other solutions, though. Windows Media, Real Video and Quicktime are proprietary solutions that only work properly in their own viewers. And though MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 work in most players, this file format does not compress well, good looking files are huge while small files look bad. We looked into trying to provide multiple formats for each video, but it would be time drain on not only to implement, but to maintain.

At this time, the most likely solution is the Flash video format. Even though it's a proprietary format, according to Adobe, Flash has a nearly ubiquitous install base. We are currently looking into compression quality, resulting file sizes and the best way to deliver these files.

Adobe Media Player Statistics
http://www.adobe.com/products/player_...