Advanced Television

NexPlayer, Edgeware partnership

June 21, 2018

NexPlayer and Edgeware hace announced a new integration, creating a joint low latency platform that connects the NexPlayer video player SDKs for Android and iOS with Edgeware’s TV Content Delivery Network (CDN) architecture.

For media organisations, ensuring their content is delivered to mobile devices with the latency of linear TV streams can be extremely difficult. As the latency of OTT streams can often range anywhere from 30 seconds to a full minute depending on traffic, network operators are looking for a way to reduce latency to match or beat traditional TV broadcasting speeds of three to five seconds, without sacrificing video quality. Now with the support of NexPlayer SDK and Edgeware’s TV CDN, organisations have a definitive approach to playback their content with even lower latency than regular TV streams, across all Android and iOS devices.

Edgeware provides its customers with the tools to build their own TV CDN, which can reduce third party CDN costs, offer more control over valuable TV content, and enhance the viewing experience with glitch-free low latency playback. Edgeware’s architecture includes a low latency TV Repackager in the origin and its TV CDN can stream TV files out of cache memory as they are still being written in, without the need to wait for a whole video segment to arrive.

NexPlayer is a video player for Android, iOS, and HTML5 providing high-quality playback and the most advanced feature set on the market. Features supported by NexPlayer include leading low latency, offline playback, time-shifting, customisable ABR, and a Widevine player working across all Android and iOS devices. For low latency purposes, NexPlayer has been modified at a purely local level to manage buffering and chunk sizes with a proprietary methodology. Since NexPlayer SDK is not based on open source technology, unique approaches to reducing latency can be implemented on a case-by-case basis.

As the CDN and the video player must be completely in sync to deliver content quickly, the pairing of NexPlayer SDK for Edgeware’s TV CDN is a welcome resolution to the latency problem. Together, NexPlayer and Edgeware have developed a market-proven platform that will be continually refined to offer further improvements.

“As more linear TV, and especially live events, are watched via OTT services, reducing latency is becoming more important,” says Johan Bolin, VP Products at Edgeware. “But with the right delivery systems, OTT services can offer an experience that goes beyond traditional broadcast TV. The integration of NexPlayer with Edgeware’s low latency CDN architecture is an example of how we can improve the user experience even further, to deliver today’s viewers an amazing OTT TV experience.”

“We are proud to strengthen our partnership with Edgeware by developing a premium content delivery platform for low latency streaming,” says Carlos Lucas, General Manager of NexPlayer. “As much as 50 per cent of latency occurs at the player level, so having a player that is fully optimized for low latency is essential when trying to match or beat traditional broadcasting speeds. Our engineers have been developing our player technology for almost 15 years, so we are not new-comers. Our proven track record shows that we have the speed, knowledge, and experience to lead the market on low latency.”

Categories: Articles, CDNs, Press Releases