In talking through video options with a client I came up with four possible options for the future of video on the web. I thought I would share. 1. Apple and Microsoft support Theora making it the universal video format. Because this involves two corporations, this will be delayed a number of years. Apple opposes Theora because it doesn't have hardware decoding support which saves battery life on their iphone, ipod, ipad devices. Microsoft is implementing a ton of stuff for IE9, but has not announced that they will implementing the Theora codec. Plus they probably have hang ups similar to Apple. 2. Apple supports WebM or VP8. IE9 is going to implement WebM which makes Apple the odd man out for supporting WebM. If the Apple adopts it, than WebM will be the universal video format for the web. This is far more likely than the first scenario because VP8 has hardware decoding and similar if not better quality to h.264. 3. H.264 is open sourced and becomes universal. This is very unlikely because the group that owns it is not tied to a company that is developing browsers and they are making a lot of money. 4. Deadlock. Apple and Microsoft ignore Theora and Apple refuses to implement WebM for whatever reason. What do you think?