We are pleased to offer PRESTOplay for Browsers, the successor to our DASH Everywhere video player, further simplifying multi-browser playback across numerous devices and operating systems.
PRESTOplay for Browsers is our new cross-browser player SDK retaining the best features of DASH Everywhere while enabling our team greater flexibility to provide new features, faster bug fixes, and better accommodation of unique customer requirements.
New Features
We’ve listened to customer feedback through the redevelopment of our player, introducing new and improved functionality including:
- Improved player customization
- Enhanced cross-plugin integration, e.g. automated synchronization between ad-insertion and video analytics
- Refined ABR algorithms to improve playback quality
- Extended HLS support across browsers
- Common API support between formats, i.e. HTML5-DASH/HLS/HLS-Native/Silverlight
- New licensing system for domain locking
- Enhanced log system for clearer bug diagnosis and faster issue response
- Improved unit and function tests, code reviews, and QA workflow
Also, all of our previous DASH Everywhere player features have been retained including:
- Comprehensive DRM support for all browsers
- HTML5 playback with Silverlight® fallback (for non HTML5/MSE/EME browsers)
- Pre-built third party integrations (YOUBORA/NPAW, Nielsen, Conviva, IMA)
- MPEG-DASH and Smooth Streaming support
- TTML subtitle support
- ID3 tag support
- Side loaded track support
- FCC compliance
- Built-in support for DRMtoday, our licensing service supporting all DRM systems needed for complete browser security (Widevine™, PlayReady®, and FairPlay Streaming)
View all of the features offered by PRESTOplay for Browsers
From DASH Everywhere to PRESTOplay
In addition to new features, PRESTOplay is now built upon Shaka Player as opposed to Dash.js, so player configuration and some options are slightly different. On the other hand, we continue to use Video.js 5, which means a large part of the configuration our customers are familiar with has not changed, and as well all Video.js plugins are still supported.
Previously with DASH Everywhere we had been using a derivative of Dash.js, sufficient for building a robust product, yet leaving us unable to quickly take advantage of some improvements in the latest versions of Dash.js. Now with Shaka, our developers gain flexibility to implement new features faster.
While the Dash.js community is more mature than that of Shaka player, there are an increasing number of contributions to improve Shaka. We intend to push pull requests to the project and, for some features that are not relevant to the Shaka main project, to provide a public repository making them usable to everybody.
Simplified fallback for older browsers
Formerly, our DASH Everywhere fallback options included both Flash and Silverlight, however, as plugin deprecation gains momentum it is no longer beneficial to support both legacy technologies. In order to provide a simpler cross-browser experience for our customers, Silverlight is now solely used as the fallback option for browsers not supporting EME in HTML5.
Flash was depreciated instead of Silverlight due to its added DRM effort:
- Flash uses the Adobe® Primetime DRM system which requires individual streaming services to obtain certification from Adobe. By comparison, Silverlight uses PlayReady (also used by Edge™ and Internet Explorer® 11) which does not involve this extra step. This means it’s quicker for customers to get their service up and running using Silverlight as the fallback.
- Avoiding Flash means we now rely on one less DRM system for cross-browser playback. Adobe Primetime is not needed for HTML5 as Firefox, the only browser featuring Primetime, also supports Widevine (which is also used by Chrome™ and Opera™).
You now only need to think about one fallback technology for complete DRM protected playback of MPEG-DASH and Smooth Streaming content across non-EME browsers.
Interested in learning more? For enquiries about our PRESTOplay SDKs for Browsers as well as Android and iOS, please contact sales@castlabs.com.
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