The world of #streaming media is always changing. It was once cutting-edge to offer live videos viewers could comment on after the fact—but today’s audiences expect much more. They demand “StreamingPLUS” experiences: live streams that incorporate interactive elements where viewers can directly participate by sending emojis, joining in live Q&As, voting on the outcome of a dramatic production and more.
Whether it’s a user-generated content (#UGC) app, a video #chat platform or a #distance #learning service, these highly engaging experiences rely on real-time streaming delivery; with even a few seconds of delay, true two-way communication is lost. These apps demand #ultra #low #latency that many streaming platforms simply can’t provide, especially at a large scale.
But now there is a way for any app developer to offer interactive streaming to end-users: the #Wowza Ultra Low Latency Streaming Service, which is part of the Wowza Streaming #Cloud™ platform. This revolutionary, managed service delivers APIs, monitoring tools and massive scalability—all with sub-two-second end-to-end latency, so you can build tomorrow’s streaming experiences.
Low Latency Facilitates Future-Ready Apps
In a recent survey of Wowza customers and streaming experts, 79 percent of respondents said they need to deliver to end-users in fewer than 10 seconds, with many requiring sub-five-second delivery. Even more impressive: A whopping 93 percent need video and metadata sync, which is necessary to deliver StreamingPLUS elements such as built-in chat, captions, voting and in-stream visuals.
Not only do these enhancements need to be delivered in near real-time, they also need to be time-synced to the video stream on both the viewer’s and the broadcaster’s end. This aligns data with on-screen action and facilitates authentic, two-way communication. With our new service, developers and content providers of any background can now build these future-ready capabilities into their platform—even if they’re not streaming experts.
The Developer Toolkit for Interactive Streaming
The Ultra Low Latency(#ULL) Service comes with an API toolkit designed for building end-to-end StreamingPLUS workflows. It allows any developer to leverage our best-in-class streaming technology without the headache of learning codecs, bitrates and transport layers, or having to manage infrastructure.
Wowza's developer toolkit includes:
Interactive documentation.
API and custom app samples.
SDKs for developing custom, professional-grade iOS and Android apps.
As the standard in streaming software, Wowza offers a proven application framework and comprehensive APIs that allow any developer to quickly move from the source code on their laptop to a worldwide, scalable service.
Management, Monitoring and Reliability Meet Massive Scale
When using Wowza's fully managed service, there’s no need for manual configuration or optimization. Intelligent, real-time monitoring and self-healing capabilities detect potential problems before they start, and automatically adjust streaming to maintain uptime. The ultra low latency service monitors your entire streaming workflow, from ingest to playback—giving you maximum insight, visibility and control over the performance of your streams.
This service is built on Microsoft #Azure, giving you enterprise-level stability and access to a global distribution of data centers, POPs and nodes, which shortens the first and last mile. Now you can deliver with sub-two-second speed to audiences as big as you can assemble, all across the world.
Even when large audiences aren’t expected, load-balancing and auto-scaling capabilities provide world-class redundancy and stability to accommodate peak viewing times. Whether you’re streaming to one person or 1,000, you can bring viewers and broadcasters together through synced, bi-directional video and data for truly interactive experiences.
Leveraging innovative technologies such as WOWZ and WebSockets, this service dramatically reduces end-to-end latency and time to first frame, providing a consistent experience across devices and apps.
Do you want in? Read more about Ultra Low Latency Service or take a survey to learn which of products is right for you, and start building tomorrow’s streaming experiences—the only limit is your imagination.