[dave2000]

Is there any technical or legal reason why it's not as easy to handle playing video as it is to show an image, from a site developer point of view? Why can't the browser do it natively? Why does it have to be handled via JavaScript and whatever else?

[eldod]

Today playing a video more complex than just decode a .mp4 file: most broadcasters use Adaptive Bitrate streaming formats like HLS and MPEG-DASH, that add a lot of complexity: How do you get the qualities and languages list? how and when do you switch the video quality? etc

In case of hls.js used by the NYT, you actually need to transmux the mpeg-ts content used in HLS into fMP4 to make it playable by the Media Source Extensions API used by the browsers.

[teen]

yea, the transmuxing is unfortunately buggy though. i had to recently switch my site back to flash because so many browsers have issues with it. it loads way faster though

[eldod]

HLS.js is doing great on Chrome, FF, Edge and Opera. For Safari it's better to use the native HLS player for now. The best option is to have HLS.js first on compatible latest browsers and Flashls as a fallback on older ones