Unfortunately it is truly annoying and very loud. Maybe warn folks before they blast that out their speakers in the wee small hours.

yeah, brings back those myspace memories for me. the browser even became unusable as well - just like it used to, with those decked out myspace themes. (actually, it's amazing to think that IE survived some of those profiles.)

The video should play if the user prompts it. To be honest, it's not the video but more the music/sound which bothers (so maybe do what Facebook does and enable sound when user clicks or something?)

most video advertisements start out with the volume muted, then you opt-in to hear the sound. that'd be my suggestion, at least

You can add a muted attribute to HTML5 video tags (muted or muted="muted") to autoplay the video without sound