Yospace Brings Support for HTTP Live Streaming to Flash
07 Jun 2012Yospace, a content distribution innovator specialising in the development of unique capabilities in multi-screen streaming, has introduced an HLS Player for Flash. This allows broadcasters and content owners to reduce the number of formats it needs to encode and store, while maintaining service for the huge installed base of Flash users during the transition towards HTML5.
HLS is the video delivery format developed by Apple for its mobile devices which do not support Flash. As well as the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad the format is also used in Android devices and online services like Roku. It is becoming a de facto standard protocol to deliver video into HTML5 environments, the next generation foundation for the web. The development by Yospace is a component that can be added by developers into an existing Flash-based Player to allow it to consume HLS streams natively.
Providers of online media, including broadcasters and on-demand services, are charged by their content delivery networks for the bandwidth to carry content to edge servers and the storage cost of caching content there. This unique development by Yospace reduces the number of formats which need to be distributed, and thus the CDN charges without reducing the service to any consumer. It therefore represents a huge commercial benefit to content providers.
“While the technical press may be full of talk of the transition to HTML5 and thus the demise of the Flash Player, the reality is that this is going to be a long-term process,” said David Springall, chief technical officer at Yospace. “We have developed a solution to allow video publishers to simplify their video production workflow and increase their delivery efficiency by eliminating the proprietary protocols required by Flash without having to turn their back on a player technology that currently reaches the widest possible audience. Over the time period that will see the transition from Flash to HTML5, we believe this technology offers a practical transitory strategy for online video publishers that will deliver real financial advantages.”
The software behind the HLS Flash Player was originally developed as part of Yospace’s advertising replacement system, which allows broadcasters to tailor online streaming of their linear channels to the interests of individual users. The functionality has now been extracted and is available as an SDK for developers to make their Flash Player HLS stream compatible.