The reasons given for the switch could have been easily mitigated. At NYT we used an HTML5 player by default and then when HTML5 isn't supported we downgrade to

The reasons given for the switch could have been easily mitigated. At NYT we used an HTML5 player by default and then when HTML5 isn't supported we downgrade to a flash video container, while still maintaining the HTML/CSS/Javascript player controls. We also have a bridge from Actionscript to Javascript for logging. We barley have to update the flash video container, it just acts as a viewport for video.