Better wait to see which one survives...

@Miguel  I have been waiting  for almost 2 years ;)

And when speaking of web developement waiting might be very risky, don't you think ?

Probably HTML5 is going to stay, is the one with more back up... flash is going out and Silver-light is Microsoft-only

everything I hear points to HTML 5, but I think you and Miguel might be a bit more hip than I do. 

VHS/BetaMax anyone? :) (or was that just the UK?)

HTML5 is where my money would go. As you say Miguel, Silverlight is MS only, so unlikely to spread to the other browsers. HTML5 is already supported by latest versions of the 'proper' internet browsers, so it has a head-start, whilst Flash seems to be losing its crown, the current Apple fiasco cant be helping.

The other question now is not just if HTML5 is going to stay, but what kind of video format is going to support: Ogg Theora H.264/MPEG-4 AVC

I agree with all of you, for me HTML5 would be a natural evolution, but :

- Silverlight and Air allow your app to run as a browser plugin or as a standalone application

- Silverlight is open-source, right ?

- HTML5 still relies on Javascript when it comes to Client side customization ?

- HTML5 must be backward compatible with all the old and bad HTML habits.(So it is born very permissive). I mean OK, you will have new cool objects, but the inner structure is still the same basically (even if it no more herited from SGML. Thinking of the time lost by developers because of 1 not have a stable client environnement, and 2 alwways have to deal with non strict languages, I have to admit that I am seduced by a new  and clean environnement. 

- That said, I do not like the idea of another virtual machine (or plugin) needed for air or silverlight 

So I keep wondering which one is the good choice.

Aren't we comparing a bit apples to oranges here?

Ok, Flex+Air running in the flash environment compare quite closely to Silverlight+WPF: both systems give the capability to run complex applications either in a browser plug-in, or as standalone apps.

But lining up these 2 with html5 is a pretty long shot, at least today. Ok, Html5 gives you the THEORETICAL capability to achieve the same kind of functionality in a standards-based, but this is neither here nor now (or even close).

Now if the question is just for running videos, yes, you have more or less the choice between H.264, regardless of what it runs on (Html5 or Silverlight), and flash... which everyone seems in a hurry to bury, forgetting that there are a zillion sites out there developed with it!

So no, I don't think that just because Steve is having a bad day with Adobe, Flash is going to disappear any time soon just like that.

I am surprised we have no comments from Silverlight or Flash aficionados, are there any ?

Sliverlight fans don't talk with us, and the Flash ones are a little scare.

@miguel : 

 or vice-versa :)

@Phillippe: I don't think Silverlight is OpenSource but is cross platform thanks to moonlight. 

If you want to do streaming, I sugger to learn Silverlight. With the new release of Silverlight 4, it's the platform the more efficient to do streaming with the H.264 codec. Silverlight comes with a very robust framework.