CBS has slowly begun to roll out an HTML5 version of it’s site to cater to mobile devices lacking Flash support. More specifically, the iPad. This is great news for iPad users and hopefully a trend that the other networks continue to follow. While ABC does not have an HTML5 version of it’s site, it does offer it’s video catalog through a dedicated iPad app. CBS has stated that they plan to release a dedicated iPad app (to hopefully replace their lame first attempt) but not until they have finished converting their Flash video offerings online. Currently, online Survivor is available through the new HTML5 video version of the site. CBS plans to continue developement over the summer with hopes that all video is HTML5 ready in time for the Fall TV season. The updates to their site coming first makes sense as enabling an HTML5 version opens the door for more devices than just the iPad. It also gives CBS time for some “lessons learned” before creating a new iPad app. Hopefully, this is another signal of the shift away from Flash for video. I’m not one of the “Flash is dead” evangelists, it just needs to be used where appropriate. And it’s not good for video for a variety of reasons.

As for Hulu, there are now two big networks (ABC, CBS) serving their video content in iPad friendly formats and it would be foolish of the other networks not to follow suit. This is unfortunate because of Hulu’s ease of use and “one-stop shop” for all TV viewing online, but I don’t see how it could happen at this point. The networks are learning that they can manage their own video and may not need Hulu after all (see “Comedy Central leaves Hulu“). So consumers will be stuck with multiple apps/sites to pull in all their video. But it the ultimate end is the ability to drop cable all together, it may be worth the slight frustration of changing between apps. Besides, multi-tasking is coming

One of the common complaints about the iPad (and any Apple product in their ecosystem) is the lack of video codec support. Apple restricts all their devices to various flavors of H.264 encoding and not much else. Numerous hacks are floating around the internets to allow devices like the Apple TV and iPhone to play other codecs. However, most of these get thwarted with Apple firmware updates or iTunes upgrades and have to be redone and reinstalled. The constant back and forth is not ideal and is frustrating at best. The iPad is the perfect “portable TV” device when it comes to size, comfort to hold, and battery life. But being restricted to just the iTunes store and H.264 encoding limits your viewing choices.

Thanks to the flexibility of the App Store this problem has been solved, sorta. The $3 Air Video app allows you to stream any video on your desktop straight to your iPad. You do have to install a small video server app to your desktop and have it on in order to stream your videos, but according to reviews, the quality over wi-fi is fantastic. Where the “sorta” comment comes in is that the app doesn’t actually stream ANY codec. Rather, it converts non-h.264 video on the fly using the ffmpeg library on your computer. This is a great workaround assuming your desktop can handle the conversion without choking which should be true for any 720p file but I wonder what a full 1080p Bluray rip would do.