MediaMelon QBR technology implemented in NexStreaming players
November 11, 2015
MediaMelon, the smart streaming company, and NexStreaming, a provider of multiscreen HLS player SDK NexPlayer, today announced a collaboration that improves adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming to consumer devices. The integration of MediaMelon QBR™ technology with the NexPlayer SDK for mobile apps enables video service providers to deliver premium quality in network-constrained situations, lowering costs and improving video performance for TV Everywhere services.
In today’s streaming and OTT environment, the need for higher video quality continues to be a top priority, and video players such as the NexStreaming solution play a key role in enabling high quality streaming while managing bandwidth used. MediaMelon QBR enabled NexStreaming players improve ABR adaptation by adjusting video bitrates based on video quality considerations, content analysis and buffer management.
“MediaMelon QBR delivers substantially better video quality and this is of great interest to all our content provider customers. The ability for QBR to deliver this quality, at lower bandwidth utilisation, and without changing the existing codecs or video formats, represents a very compelling proposition,” said Carlos Lucas, VP at NexStreaming. “We have seen the QBR integration results and we are impressed by the quality improvement it can bring to playback with our NexPlayer. The reduction in bits streamed also results in lower start delay, and buffering in congested networks.”
MediaMelon QBR enhances today’s widely deployed adaptive bitrate (ABR) technology, lowering bitrate requirements for video streaming by 35 per cent on average while also reducing content quality variance by an average of 86 per cent and thereby eliminating video artifacts. Consequently, service providers can lower costs for both CDN and storage usage, and provide better quality of experience for the end user.
With the integration of QBR with NexStreaming, publishers who have delivered video streams to various consumer electronics devices can now benefit from QBR capabilities. The technology will intelligently utilize the existing bandwidth to increase bitrates where needed and save in other areas, thereby increasing overall video quality and reducing costs.
“At MediaMelon, we are working with industry leaders to take ABR to the next level by enabling dramatic improvements in quality and bandwidth utilization via our QBR technology,” said Kumar Subramanian, MediaMelon CEO. “NexStreaming’s NexPlayer is an important product used by many leading video services, and this integration is another step toward simplifying and improving ABR video delivery. The combination of technologies from MediaMelon and NexStreaming provides significant benefit, allowing viewers watching QBR-powered video to enjoy more video, at higher quality. These longer viewing times also improve monetization for the service provider, enabling more advertising opportunities.”
MediaMelon QBR technology is at the heart of the MediaMelon Qubit solutions, available as a managed service for QBR-optimised real-time or VoD service delivery. QBR substantially improves today’s ABR technology by means of rapid scene analysis, content characterization, perceptual quality mapping and advanced buffer management techniques. These solutions integrate seamlessly into the existing video workflow, via SDKs implemented in encoders and video players. MediaMelon solutions are compatible with all major streaming formats including HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), MPEG-DASH, HTTP Smooth Streaming (HSS) and HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS).
NexStreaming’s NexPlayer SDK is a powerful mobile media player ideal for mobile video apps offered by video service providers. The NexPlayer SDK supports PD/Local Playback, HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) and Microsoft Smooth Streaming, providing the best video quality on every device and solving the problem of device fragmentation in terms of player capability. It includes support for the most advanced features such as closed captioning and time shifting. Furthermore, the NexPlayer SDK can be easily integrated into any Android, iOS, Windows Phone or Android TV application and supports all OS versions and devices with one library.