This paper reports on research investigating the current ability of HTML5 to play video in mobile browsers. Smartphones and the Mobile Internet are rapidly becoming an important platform for access to information anytime and anywhere. HTML5, the new HTML standard incorporates features like video playback that have been previously dependent on third-party browser plug-ins but there are no browsers that currently provide 100% support for HTML5. All the tests reported in this paper were carried out using smartphones with screen sizes 3.0 to 4.8 inches and the ability to replay videos of a range of formats, move directly to time points in the video and display closed captions were investigated. Key findings were that: video cannot be started programmatically; only selecting on the screen can trigger playback; no visual elements sitting over the video will receive click events while the video is visible (playing or paused); there are many HTML5 video players but MediaElement.js was found to currently be the open source player satisfying the greatest number of requirements.
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