[the8472]

Doesn't IE use directshow filters for playback? As long as anything like ffdshow or lavfilters is installed it could just use those.

Afaik firefox uses system-provided h.264 decoders to support that since they don't want to ship one with firefox.

[kuschku]

Firefox ships their own decoder now, Cisco donated a license of the MPEG patents to Mozilla.

[the8472]

I have been told that's only used for webrtc. playing <video> tags uses ffmpeg on linux or media foundation on windows.

[le_lenny_face]

>playing <video> tags uses ffmpeg on linux

If only. It uses that broken pile of abstraction called GStreamer.