Our site currently is going to require our users to download a player to view videos they will want to view on our site. The videos get uploaded by users from various sources (smartphones in 3gp format for example).

However most people have Flash on their machines. I am trying to 'make a gentle stand' and tell the team that requiring a download of a video player is not acceptable. My thinking is this:

• instead of allowing people to upload 3gp and other formats then re-serving the exact format on REQUESTs from our site's users
• we will instead use a video converter such as FFMpeg to convert every uploaded video to FLV for viewing on flash.
• so when a user requests to view one of the videos on our site -- boom they probably already have Flash installed so we just play the video in their Flash player.

I feel serving up FLV flash video is best. Does it ring true that requiring, say, a 3gp player download just to view a video is the wrong approach?