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There’s an interesting contradiction happening. It’s somewhat difficult to find video that doesn’t play on the iPhone and iPad, yet people have been snapping up a new browser that replaces Flash video into HTML5 (H.264), making it playable across Apple’s idevice product line.

Bloggers and journos are saying that SkyFire (iTunes, $2.99) brings Flash support to the iPhone and iPad, which isn’t true. What it does is scrape the Flash away and leave you with viewable H.264 video served from the company’s servers.

Although it does run on the iPad, Skyfire requires pixel-doubling and, thereupon, looks awful. On an iPod touch it looks OK and works just as well.

The navigation elements are, relatively speaking, overly large and take up far too much screen real estate — the user interface needs refinement.

As a browser just for browsing, Skyfire pales when compared to other WebKit-based mobile browsers, such as iCab Mobile 4.0. It doesn’t offer tabs and you can’t import bookmarks, two things that seriously limit its usability.

Content is king

Thankfully, there are other ways to play this content.

Whereas SkyFire promises to play any Flash video, it sometimes doesn’t. For example, I haven’t been able to play Sherlock Holmes clips or programs off PBS.org (See also: PBS for iPad: Stable, easy, really good content).

Oddly, or not, whereas Sherklock hosted on PBS.org doesn’t play, sometimes generating an error message, the same exact shorts when hosted on YouTube play just fine — welcome to video on the web business 101.

And, this brings up an important point — broadcasters like Flash because it gives them the power to track, monitor and monetize you. So, if it’s not in their “best” (short-term) interest to allow scraping, then they will find ways to block it.

It’s been widely reported that Skyfire has sold out on the App Store. This is a misinterpretation of what’s really happening — Skyfire (the company)’s ability to serve video is what’s being stretched not the supply of app bits and that’s why they’re actively limiting the number of seats they sell.

Mixed blessing

Ultimately, I hope I remember parting with this three bucks because, sooner or later, Skyfire will come in handy. However, Skyfire lacks grace and won’t be my everyday browser.

So, what I suspect is gonna happen is that it will have been completely forgotten by the time need arises…

What’s your take?