Wowza Increases Scalability of Live Low-Latency Streaming with Updated Wowza Streaming Engine

By Nicholas Toth | November 15, 2016

General Availability of Wowza Player Provides HTML5 Alternative to Flash Playback

Golden, Colo. — Nov 15, 2016 — Wowza™ Media Systems, the recognized gold standard of live video and audio streaming solutions for organizations worldwide, today announced the latest update to Wowza Streaming Engine™ software, version 4.6, and the general availability of the Wowza Player. The latest version of Wowza Streaming Engine provides dramatic enhancements to improve scalability for live low-latency workflows, incorporate new GPU scaling, and provide more deployment options for cloud installations. Additionally, the new Wowza Player simplifies the delivery of Flash®-free streaming workflows to create a consistent viewing experience on any device, application or website.

“Wowza continues to deliver technologies that shape the streaming landscape, with high-quality video-streaming solutions that are flexible, reliable, scalable and affordable,” said David Stubenvoll, CEO and co-founder of Wowza Media Systems. “With the updates of Wowza Streaming Engine and the availability of Wowza Player, we’ve introduced a new era of streaming that embraces live low-latency and Flash-less workflows at an unprecedented scale.”

With the feature updates in Wowza Streaming Engine v4.6, customers gain significant benefits, with the ability to do the following:

  • Deliver live low-latency WebRTC at scale: The new WebRTC Live Repeater functionality allows customers using the WebRTC preview feature to scale sessions utilizing multiple Wowza Streaming Engine instances as an edge network. By implementing the live repeater on Wowza-based workflows, producers can achieve the lowest-latency delivery of content for a Flash-free viewing experience anywhere in the world.
  • Reduce CPU load by up to 90%: GPU scaling and load-balancing enhancements, now implemented through a simple XML configuration, can dramatically reduce compute resources. When this configuration is enabled, Wowza Streaming Engine invokes Nvidia Tesla and newer-generation graphics cards to utilize the Nvidia “accelerated encoding scaling” functionality. This provides faster transcoding and maximizes available computing resources without interjecting latency into the transcoding process.
  • Expand global deployments: Wowza Streaming Engine is now available on more cloud platforms and services around the world, allowing for greater scalability and delivery. Wowza has expanded its Amazon Web Services deployments to serve India, and server deployments are now also available on Alibaba Cloud in China and worldwide. Additionally, Wowza Streaming Engine is now available on Docker with a new Linux image for developers, providing greater flexibility to create streaming applications on any Docker-supported production server or cloud provider, including Microsoft Azure and Google Compute Engine. For customers already using Microsoft Azure, Wowza Streaming Engine can be purchased directly through the Azure Marketplace.

 

Enable End-to-End Wowza Workflows with Wowza Player General Availability

In addition to the new Wowza Streaming Engine updates, the Wowza Player is now available and can be added to streaming workflows directly from the Wowza Streaming Engine Manager or the Wowza Streaming Cloud™ service. The HTML5 Wowza Player easily embeds into new and existing applications across all devices, while taking advantage of emerging HLS playback requirements.

Key features of the Wowza Player include:

  • Responsive playback without plug-ins
  • Playback controls for dimension resizing, play, pause, seek, mute, normal screen, full screen and autostart
  • Adaptive bitrate playback, with AI-based quality optimization
  • DVR capabilities allowing viewers to replay or skip ahead in a live broadcast
  • Simple-to-use JavaScript API, including ID3 metadata support
  • Analytics for viewing statistics

 

To unveil the new features of Wowza Streaming Engine and Wowza Player, the company will host two upcoming Facebook Live sessions. Today, at 12:30 p.m. PT, Wowza will present how the latest Wowza Streaming Engine developments help deliver low-latency streaming at scale. And on Thursday, Wowza will present the new enhancements in Wowza Player for live mobile streaming.

For more information about Wowza Streaming Engine 4.6 or Wowza Player, visit Wowza.com.

About Wowza Media Systems

Wowza™ Media Systems is the recognized gold standard of live streaming, with more than 19,000 customers in 170+ countries. By reducing the complexities of video and audio delivery to any device, Wowza enables organizations to expand their reach and more deeply engage their audiences, in industries ranging from education to broadcasting. Service providers, direct customers, and partners worldwide trust Wowza products to provide robust, customizable, and scalable streaming solutions—with powerful APIs and SDKs to meet organizations’ evolving streaming needs. Wowza was founded in 2005, is privately held, and is headquartered in Colorado. For more information, please visit www.wowza.com.

 

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Media Contact

Chris Michaels, Dir. of Communications and PR
Wowza Media Systems
chris.michaels@wowza.com
+1 (720) 279-8086 x124