VidTech

Replacing Flash: HTML5 Adaptive Streaming and DRM

Stefan Lederer
. 2 min read
Stefan Lederer talks about html5 video player adaptive streaming

html5 adaptive streamingRecently I participated in a panel on “Replacing Flash: Adaptive Streaming and DRM in HTML5”, presenting Bitmovin’s approach with the Bitmovin MPEG-DASH and HLS player to fully leverage the capabilities of HTML5 for high quality media streaming. This panel was organized and moderated by StreamingMedia.com’s well known streaming expert Jan Ozer at the Streaming Media East Show in New York.
W3C did a great job with the standardization of the HTML5 Media Source Extensions which enable adaptive bitrate streaming using MPEG-DASH natively in the browser without proprietary and in-performant plugins such as Flash or Silverlight, as well as the HTML5 Encrypted Media Extensions, which enable the usage of DRM-encrypted content using MPEG-CENC. This is a great example of how different standards and standardization organizations are working together to provide an open, company-independent and standardized ecosystem. This is also recognized by the industry. However, as good solutions are still rare, Bitmovin’s HTML5 Player has a perfect position on the market. And it’s the perfect time to switch to a HTML5-based player; especially for premium video providers with thought DRM requirements, as Google’s Chrome is removing Silverlight and thus the possibility to use Microsoft’s PlayReady DRM in Chrome (read more on this in my previous blog post: The Status of MPEG-DASH today and why YouTube and Netflix use it in HTML5).
"html5 video player adaptive streaming" Bitmovin CEO Stefan ledererIn this talk, I presented customer deployments of the bitdash HTML5 player (now known as Bitmovin HTML5 Player), such as www.flimmit.com, www.kronehit.tv, www.sonostream.tv and www.genflix.co.id, who moved their streaming technology to the next level, to provide a superior experience for their customers – everything natively in HTML5 with no need for proprietary plugins like Flash or Silverlight. Out of these deployments, I shared insights on the used technologies for the different platforms to the industry experts:

Platform Used Player Streaming DRM
Chrome Bitmovin Player using HTML5 MSE MPEG-DASH Widevine Modular
IE – Windows 8.1 Bitmovin Player using HTML5 MSE MPEG-DASH PlayReady
IE – Windows 7 Bitmovin Player using Flash / Silverlight MPEG-DASH ClearKey / PlayReady
Firefox Bitmovin Player using Flash or HTML5 MSE MPEG-DASH Adobe / Widvine Modular
Safari Bitmovin Player using HTML5 MSEbitdash using HTML5 HLS MPEG-DASH / HLS Fairplay HLS / AES HLS
Android – Web Bitmovin Player using HTML5 MSEbitdash using HTML5 HLS MPEG-DASH / HLS Widevine Modular
Android – App App using Googe’s Exoplayer MPEG-DASH Widevine Modular
iOS – Web bitdash using HTML5 HLS HLS AES
iOS – App Native HLS support HLS AES / Fairplay

Check out the review of the session from StreamingMedia’s Paul Schmutzler at www.streamingmedia.com or watch the recording of the session on StreamingMedia’s YouTube Channel:

We hope these insights from our player deployments are interesting and useful for you. If you have more detailed questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Thanks and best,
Stefan from the Bitmovin Team

Follow me on Twitter: @slederer
Follow Bitmovin on Twitter: @bitmovin

 

Stefan Lederer

Stefan Lederer

Co-Founder & CEO

Stefan Lederer is a renowned innovator and thought leader in video streaming with a strong background in academic research. Stefan co-created the MPEG-DASH video streaming standard and has contributed to several open-source tools, including DASHEncoder, DASHoverCCN and VLC plugin. Stefan also serves as an external lecturer at the University of Klagenfurt.


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