This is either a good thing or a bad thing. Actually, like most things, it’s a bit of both. Adobe’s FLV file format is the de facto standard for web video due to sharing sites like YouTube using it exclusively. Many would argue that’s a bad thing (despite the fact that it works well for most people) because it gives a single company a stranglehold over an entire province of internet content.

So when NVIDIA works with them to accelerate decoding the format, it’s a bit of a mixed blessing. Better performance and integration like this will surely extend the life of, and silence performance complaints about, FLV. For now it’s a good thing, but come HTML5…

See, there are plans to implement a plain ‘ol <video> tag which would embed the actual video in the web browser, sans Flash wrapper. This means that (hopefully) it’d be hardware-accelerated regardless of the make and model of your video card, and most importantly, regardless of any licensing agreement that’s been made with the video’s proprietor.

Still, HTML 5 is a ways off (and widespread video tags even further off, considering how entrenched FLVs are), so right now it’s the devil you know, and it’ll run better than ever. I have no problem with that.

[via Netbooked and Lilliputing]