thePlatform is a Comcast (News – Alert)-owned online video publishing company that has been at the forefront of the HTML5 revolution since unveiling its PDK-based HTML5 video player a year ago. Now, after one year of internal development and a little over a month after W3C declared the HTML5 standard complete, the company is releasing its enhanced video player service.

The player is a significant step forward for HTML5 because although it can still provide video playback in Adobe Systems’ (News – Alert) still widely used Flash, it defaults to the HTML5 Web standard. In fact, it is capable of quickly and seamlessly switching to flash when necessary if HTML5 isn’t supported.

For companies, this serves as a reminder that HTML5 is no longer just on the way: it’s here. For consumers, this means faster load times for video playback.

Perhaps more significantly, HTML5 streaming also results in lower development costs as it ensures that videos render well across a range of devices, not just desktops. Furthermore, thePlatform’s (News – Alert) mpx publishing system is capable of automatically associating all metadata and business policies for videos across HTML5 and Flash without the need for duplicate back-end systems.

“We’ve always supported HTML5, but the technology has matured over the past 18 months, and it’s now ready for primetime,” said Marty Roberts, thePlatform senior vice president of sales and marketing, in a statement. “HTML5 has become the lead technology that we recommend to our customers for publishing video across devices, and it has replaced Flash as the default setting in our mpx Player Service.”

thePlatform’s Player Service has been designed to automatically update with iOS, Android and Windows 8 releases, ensuring that videos are always available. It also supports video-on-demand and live ad insertion through advertising partners — FreeWheel, Adobe Auditude and Google’s (News – Alert) DoubleClick — as well as quality monitoring by way of real-time and historical reporting tools.

Current customer of thePlatform include A+E Networks, Cablevision Systems, Comcast, Cox (News – Alert) Communications, Liberty Global, Rogers, Time Warner Cable and USA Network.