Which Windows versions support h264 playback out of the box (with Windows Media Player)? Is it possible to detect whether the support is available through Javascript?
We are serving MPEG-4 video files via Flash. We get requests from the users that they'd like to save the videos. However when Download button is enabled we get complains that the videos are not working, because apparently Windows XP cannot play MPEG-4.
Alternatively we can just implement platform detection via platform.js and disable Download option for known bad platforms.
Windows is shipped with
H.264 Video Decoderstarting with Windows 7. Earlier versions and server operating systems require installation of third party decoder.See:
There is no way that I can think of to ensure via JavaScript that third party decoder is installed.