In a major victory for open standards, and fast downloads, Adobe is now adopting the h.264 video codec into the latest version of flash:

Adobe today announced the latest version of its near ubiquitous Web video software, Adobe Flash Player 9. It’s codenamed Moviestar, because it includes H.264 standard video support V the same standard deployed in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD high definition video players. In other words, the quality of video has been substantially improved from the previous version of Flash Player 9.

You might be wondering why this is a big deal, but it means that any industry standard tool can be used to generate/play flash videos and that they will look much better and download quicker.

Now if only they could figure out how to manage the bloat that keeps flash from running efficiently…