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what is the difference between embedding a video in a web page using the embed element versus using a video element(newly introduced in HTML 5)?
how does it matter if a third party plugin is required to play the video in the former case or if inherent browser support itself is required as in the latter case?
There is one practical difference: a plugin is a separate piece of software that needs to be installed on the system. Hence, the plugin must be available for the system the end user has. If your site gets a visitor using Mac PowerPC (it’s not that old), are you sure that the plugin you’ve chosen for video will work there? What about Linux or Solaris? What about iPhone?
When web browsers create the VIDEO tag and try to assume the responsibility for playing video, it simplifies some things: it becomes easier to check if a certain video format can be viewed and you need to worry only about browser version (which is easy to detect), not about operating system, what plugins are installed, and what versions of the plugins the user has.
Naturally, with development happening incrementally reality is more complicated than we’d like it to be – so for the time being you should probably serve video in several formats, one of them should probably be flv..