Flash FLV is a wrapper for a variety of codecs that are mainly proprietary (and some standard like MPEG, H.264, H.263). On2 VP6 and Sorenson Video Codec to nam

Flash FLV is a wrapper for a variety of codecs that are mainly proprietary (and some standard like MPEG, H.264, H.263). On2 VP6 and Sorenson Video Codec to name a few (which Adobe pays for), but Adobe could be extremely ruthless and work in Theora/Ogg into their FLV wrapper as well without a huge standards battle. So in terms of agility to change to avoid excessive fees, Flash might actually be better situated. Really all Flash has to do is hardware accelerate their video (easier said than done - and not just for full screen) and it will alleviate the poor performance perception as it is all software decoding right now. Still though, content creators that don't want to pay fees should really pay attention to this situation. Video could get very expensive online shortly if we are all on the H.264 html5 <video> will save us bandwagon. It would really suck to have to go with proprietary video just to stay cheap.