Viewing BBC embedded videos on version 4.0.x

[thomoad]

Hi everyone,

New user here!

I have just bought an S3 upgrading from iphone 4 and i already love Android!

But one of the things I have found frustrating is viewing embedded videos, particularly on the BBC site.

I couldn't work out how to view embedded videos on the BBC site because all I was getting was the 'cannot play media' message below each one. But now i realise you can only view them in the stock browser that the phone comes with (what is this browser??) rather than Chrome as I was using.

But that got me thinking why should this matter when the BBC must surely have converted videos to HTML5 as they can be played on iphones and ipads. Does anyone know the reason why viewing these videos on an Android phone seems to be insistent on having Flash installed?

If anyone could enlighten me or point out anything I am doing wrong I would appreciate it!

Adam

 

[zuben el genub]

Don't know about the embedded ones, but I've been downloading most of the scientific BBC videos from Youtube, and you get asked which format. Mp4, FLV, and sometimes M4v.

I tried the M4v which was recommended as best for download, and the music player opened rather than the video player when I checked the download. This was in Ubuntu. My Nexus S saves videos in the m4v format and no problem, but XP can't open them. I have to change the extension to mP4.

If M4v is the HTML5 extension, there seems to be some confusion as to what the file is - video or audio. The browser on your phone would use the native/default viewer I should think. That's why the vids would play.

The downloaded videos (MP4, 320) are playing just fine on an Acer A500 tablet and a 17" TV.