How Haivision Play SRT Video Streaming Changed My Life (or at least my train ride)
Wow – I wish the low latency SRT video streaming protocol was around years ago when I was learning the basics of RTMP and TS/UDP streaming. I have just used the latest version of Haivision Play for Mobile (iOS) – which now includes SRT protocol support – and was absolutely blown away. Here is why – our engineers have added the basic capability of sending an SRT stream directly from our popular mobile video player application.
Now you might be thinking – here we go – a pitch for a new feature.
Wrong. We don’t even charge for Haivision Play.
Read on to learn how SRT, supported in our free video streaming player and mobile app surprised even me.
When I travel to see customers and partners around the world, I like to quickly demonstrate how our products work and provide some training during the presentations I give. Conveniently showing a live stream to the audience and getting the audience to participate has been a cool trick that I use to get them to understand some basics.
In the past, to do these demonstrations, I have had to carry around a Makito X video encoder, my MacBook, and a small camera., I would create a network on my MacBook, set up the Makito video encoder, plug in the camera, start streaming, and then get the audience to tune to the multicast stream using our InStream Mobile application.
A lot of work.
A Small Change for Haivision Play; a Big Impact for SRT
Recently, the latest version of Haivision Play features the ability to tune to any SRT, UDP or HLS stream, not just streams coming from the Haivision Media Platform. I’ll go into more detail about that in a future blog post, but I just opened the latest version and I saw that it now has the ability to create a stream from the mobile phone camera source and send it out over SRT or UDP (yes, even multicast).
What this means for me is that to show streaming basics and the benefits of SRT I no longer have to carry anything with me other than my iPhone. I simply create a WiFi network hotspot on my MacBook, join it, and set Haivision Play to stream the camera using SRT. Of course, I set the device to “listen” mode so that the audience can “call” in and see the stream using Haivision Play on their mobile devices – giving them a chance to be even more involved.
Portable and Practical
It’s not that we designed Haivision Play strictly for mobile streaming – there are already plenty of apps for that. However, there are a few use cases where this mobile streaming app could be useful. For instance, a broadcaster could send low-latency streams to their field crews for production monitoring, teleprompter feeds, or live interviews, right on their mobile devices. Or, if in a pinch, you needed to get a mobile stream to your Makito video decoder, you could use the streaming capability of Haivision Play.
Perhaps interesting for you as well is the “standalone” mode of the Haivision Play set top boxes. These affordable and compact units can tune directly to any SRT stream and drive large format displays at HD or 4K.
I was so excited when I saw this, I set up a quick network while heading to the Tokyo airport on the Narita Express and started streaming to myself!!
Don’t let the Internet slow you down. Tune into SRT. And look out for future updates about the Haivision Play video player apps on this blog.
Want to find out how Haivision Play can help you tune into SRT and easily create your own streams, even when on the go? Learn more about Haivision Play, available for on iOS, Android, and AppleTV!
