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Comment by chrisma0 | Hacker News Reader

Returns either `probably`, `maybe` or '' (definitely not) for whether a browser is able to play a MIME type.

As the method returns strings anyways and `maybe` is pretty unhelpful, I request the return be changed to '¯\_(ツ)_/¯' (which is equally unhelpful, but at least a bit more fun).

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+1 to changing maybe to a shrug :)

MediaCapabilities is the new way to ask the "can I play this" question: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Media_Capab...

It returns a boolean for whether a codec is supported or not.

MediaCapabilites.IsTypeSupported was very unhelpful when used to check if mimetype is supported for encoding instead of decoding. But perhaps that's not what it was created for.

Yes, it was originally for decoding information only.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MediaCapabi... is on the way. I believe the latest Safari preview has it implemented and Chromium should have it shortly as well.

problem is mime types are also as meaningless. This whole API is worthless as you can tell from the return values!

It’s true. “video/mp4” really means nothing. At most, it’s a mime type for the file container, but exposes no information on the video and audio codecs contained in it. A better approach would be using this API for querying whether the video, audio and subtitle elements are playable, in addition to the container.

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