Great engineering work but as a user I don't get why we need these: I just want the OS native widget that allow me to play pause seek and maybe choose captions. Especially on iOS 99% of these web players behaves awkwardly when you tried to pinch to zoom to full screen (usually it zooms the whole webpage, iOS native player just works)
The main incentive to have these custom controls I see is anti adblocking
> I just want the OS native widget that allow me to play pause seek and maybe choose captions.
You're not asking for the OS native widget though, you're asking for Apple's native OS widget to support that. The problem is that makes it up to Apple to lift a finger to support it. And Apple does whatever it wants. Sometimes those things are aligned with you as a user, sometimes not. And yes, showing ads is one reason some parties have for this. The other large one though, is codec support. If you're not in the game, codec support seems like such an inconsequential detail that it can't possibly be the real issue, but with money on the line, it's a bigger deal than you'd thing.
The thing is, unless you get in the weeds, the codec support is paid for when you buy the hardware. You don't have to deal with it. But when you're not Mr. Beast, showing videos on the big platforms, you aren't making giant piles of money. Thus, you need to optimize smaller details to make smaller amounts of money.
Which codec is being used becomes material because you can save money there with encoding and you can save money with content delivery as well. It's just about money. So it's not (just) about ad blocking money; it's about content creation and distribution costs.
I would want to use separate programs for displaying videos, whether or not the operating system includes them. Being able to play, pause, seek, set caption styles (including size, colour, and opacity), record it on a DVD, etc, would be helpful, but that can be whatever program you decide to use that has the features you wanted; whoever made the video or wants to send it to you should not need to care which of these features you are using (although they will need to include captions if you want them).
I wrote a program to record videos from HLS, including the option to avoid downloading commercial breaks. However, some things are still missing and/or might not work properly. (Some things, such as converting it to the DVD video format and then recording it onto a DVD, are done with separate programs and is out of scope of this one.)
fragmede|1 month ago
You're not asking for the OS native widget though, you're asking for Apple's native OS widget to support that. The problem is that makes it up to Apple to lift a finger to support it. And Apple does whatever it wants. Sometimes those things are aligned with you as a user, sometimes not. And yes, showing ads is one reason some parties have for this. The other large one though, is codec support. If you're not in the game, codec support seems like such an inconsequential detail that it can't possibly be the real issue, but with money on the line, it's a bigger deal than you'd thing.
The thing is, unless you get in the weeds, the codec support is paid for when you buy the hardware. You don't have to deal with it. But when you're not Mr. Beast, showing videos on the big platforms, you aren't making giant piles of money. Thus, you need to optimize smaller details to make smaller amounts of money.
Which codec is being used becomes material because you can save money there with encoding and you can save money with content delivery as well. It's just about money. So it's not (just) about ad blocking money; it's about content creation and distribution costs.
zzo38computer|1 month ago
VladVladikoff|1 month ago
zzo38computer|1 month ago
pocksuppet|1 month ago