Our Media Player’s Journey in 2023
This year our Media Player has undergone significant enhancements and expansions. Driven by both customer feedback and our strategic roadmap, we’ve introduced an array of new features and functionalities.
Looking at the availability of our Media Player on certain platforms, we completed a major step for supporting Android devices: By integrating the Android MediaCodec API, our Media Player now offers efficient, platform-independent media decoding across all recent Android platforms. This crucial development paves the way for embedding our Media Player seamlessly into standard Android applications. This is especially a benefit for operators who intend to offer the same excellent streaming experience on smart TVs as on the operator’s STB.
Aligning with Android’s standard DRM system, Widevine, we’re in the process of integrating Android’s MediaDRM with our player. This integration will enable our Media Player to support any DRM system available on Android devices. A notable milestone in this direction is our early-year support for fragmented MP4 and SampleAES encryption, for our customer A1 for the integration of Verimatrix ultra security.
Many of our customers use our Media Player for highly optimised HLS playback, but due to the broader use of CMAF also DASH becomes a more important topic. Therefore, we invested in the evolution of DASH capabilities in our Media Player to support Widevine protected DASH VOD and live streams in an optimal way. This gives our customers the best flexibility in selecting streaming formats.
As targeted advertisement is becoming a valuable source of income for many operators, we also supported our customers this year with the integration of ad insertion/replacement solutions. Supporting targeted advertisement either on server-side (SSAI) or client-side (CSAI) can be challenging. Beyond seamless playback integration, we’ve upgraded our monitoring and analytics system. This enhancement is specifically tailored to analyse streams with personalized ads, a critical factor in the success of targeted advertising.
The above is a selection of topics that have been addressed in 2023 by our Media Player team and many of them are already in use by our customers and partners. As we look forward to the coming year, we are excited to tackle new challenges and introduce further innovative solutions in the ever-evolving landscape of media technology.