Less than a week after CBS let the cat out of the bag on its own iPad HTML5 tests, more media companies appear to boarding the HTML5 video train. Video services company Brightcove announced Monday morning that it will support HTML5 for its customers, offering "high quality, interactive, and advertising-supported Web video experiences for HTML5-compatible devices." Two major Brightcove clients, the New York Times and Time Inc., are participating launch partners, meaning that these two sources will have the option of ditching Flash in some cases in order to be more iPad compatible.

Brightcove's announcement comes just days before the iPad launch, and the company makes no attempt to hide the fact that this is a major reason for the HTML5 support. More than 1,000 Brightcove customers will be able to "easily expand the reach of their online video initiatives to popular consumer devices including the Apple iPad, iPhone and iPod touch," wrote the company. Brightcove currently provides support for device detection, playlist rendering, and playback of H.264 content, but plans to add support for customization, advertising, analytics, social sharing, and other features over the next year.

With such major names as the New York Times and Time on board, it's pretty clear that media companies aren't holding out hope that Apple and Adobe will kiss and make up. Like CBS, it's likely that they'll keep using Flash on their normal websites while allowing iPhone OS devices to access the HTML5 versions of the videos—at least for a while. The remaining questions are when can we expect Hulu to hop on the HTML5 train, and will Netflix reconsider its stance on bringing its own streaming videos (via Silverlight) to the iPad?