Vimeo, a video sharing site I have reviewed in the past (and personally endorse for all my video content) has released an update to their player that supports native resolution HD in Flash.

Needless to say, the update is being widely embraced by the video community and beyond, getting coverage in Motionographer, Kottke, and many others. Although I’m no Flash expert, I’m guessing this is using Adobe’s new “Moviestar” technology because

1. Flash Player 9, the latest version, is required. Found this out the hard way when I was using a crappy old Windows PC with outdated software earlier today.
2. Jakob Lodwick, Vimeo’s founder, wrote about the Moviestar technology at his personal blog.
3. Really, how else could they do it? Current Flash tech doesn’t support high def video (at the codec level, like H264 does), and certainly streaming video with the VP3 codec at a high def size would kill your average server.

Why do I care if Vimeo is using Moviestar? Mostly I’m just curious, but I also am interested because this would be the first major real world application of the technology. If so, props to Vimeo; this is a very strong addition to their recent series of changes that have turned Vimeo into a world-class video sharing community.