A Hulu executive has cast doubt on claims that HTML5 is ready for the big time, claiming "it doesn't yet meet all of our customers' needs".

HTML5 has become one of the weapons in the war between Adobe and Apple, with Steve Jobs claiming that HTML5 can supersede Adobe's ubiquitous web technology.

However, if it's to fulfil this promise then first it has to sway services such as Hulu - currently the US's second most popular video-streaming site after YouTube.

"We continue to monitor developments on HTML5, but as of now it doesn’t yet meet all of our customers’ needs," said product video president Eugene Wei in a blog post.

"Our player doesn't just simply stream video, it must also secure the content, handle reporting for our advertisers, render the video using a high performance codec to ensure premium visual quality, communicate back with the server to determine how long to buffer and what bitrate to stream, and dozens of other things that aren’t necessarily visible to the end user," he added.

Wei said Hulu would continue to "evaluate" HTML5.

Implementors should be aware that this specification is not stable. Implementors who are not taking part in the discussions are likely to find the specification changing out from under them in incompatible ways. Vendors interested in implementing this specification before it eventually reaches the Candidate Recommendation stage should join the aforementioned mailing lists and take part in the discussions.

Google's HTML5 version of Youtube is pretty good.

If it works for Youtube, why not for this site I've never heard of?

If it works for Youtube, why not for this site I've never heard of?