Adobe today announced availability of Flash Player 9 Update 3, which amongst other things, offers H.264 video support, as found in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD video players. Personally, I've been willfully ignorant of the whole new HD standards war, because the increase in enjoyment to watch a movie like the Matrix in regular DVD is only marginally less than the enjoyment I'd recieve watching it in HD.
I'm sure a significant portion of the readership is now revving up to type a horde of angry comments on my cavalier indifference, but one thing the readership and I do seem to agree on is the marginal difference between watching HD on an embedded video website. We recently ran a poll here at Mashable! asking if the readers cared about high definition for online video.
Those that would choose a service based on it only outnumbered the folks who would "somewhat prefer it" by eight people, who outnumbered the folks who could care less by 14.
Regardless, Adobe and now Hulu forge ahead blissfully unaware with their new HD initiatives.
Hulu's gallery will launch with select movie trailers and clips from Universal and Fox Studios in 1280 x 720 resolution and 2,500Kbps. While they may be the first online video service to adopt this technology, we can't help but wonder if it will finally make the service compelling enough to want to make it their destination of choice in the face of YouTube's total dominance of the market.