Consistency in video support is almost non existent. So serving variations for every platform is frequently better simplified. Rather than come up with every p

Consistency in video support is almost non existent. So serving variations for every platform is frequently better simplified. Rather than come up with every possible test we simply broke it up into two categories, those that need flash (HDS) and those that don't (HLS). I'm sure there are some browsers that would work for HLS that are getting served HDS and flash, but they still work, and we got fairly wide compatibility without having to spend too much time maintaining compatibility lists. This might not be the best way to run a video specific site like youtube, but being a moving target, I wouldn't be surprised.