HLS and MPEG-DASH are the current standards for HTTP-based live streaming, but these designs are inherently slow and must add delay to manage quality and scale. Typically, these protocols produce latencies of 10-60+ seconds, which may be acceptable in many live streaming use cases, but not when real-time latency is critical like in sports, betting, bidding, financial news, gaming, etc.
Millicast solved this problem by building a WebRTC-based realtime content delivery network (CDN) for large-scale live streaming with sub-second latency, across all devices, without special plugins or protocols. Originally built to replace Flash (RTMP), Millicast was the first live streaming CDN based on true end-to-end WebRTC and reduces the latency from publisher to viewer to less than 500 milliseconds.
Millicast enables developers to take the highly interactive events they can build with Dolby.io cloud resources, from conferences to music concerts, and stream them from the presenter to audiences of more than 60,000 people with delays of less than 500 milliseconds. With the acquisition, Millicast will also bolster Dolby.io WebRTC engineering expertise with a highly-skilled team that has developed standards such as WHIP, which enable WebRTC interoperability.
"There is a growing demand to make online events as lifelike and compelling as being there in person," says Marie Huwe, SVP, Dolby.io. "We are thrilled to welcome the Millicast team to Dolby. Together, we expand the Dolby.io platform to make it even easier for developers and businesses to stream real-time content and immersive, interactive experiences that look and sound incredible."
"Dolby and Millicast share a passion for enabling the future of lightning-fast, crystal-clear content streamed to thousands of participants," says Alexandrine Platonoff, CEO, Millicast. "Together, we have the opportunity to bring ultra-low latency to a global customer base and empower them to build virtualized, massive audience experiences that feel almost as if you were there. We're excited to become a part of Dolby and can't wait to see what we build together."
The vision for Dolby.io is to help developers and businesses achieve stellar audiovisual content and interactive social communications in their applications and services. A vital piece of that vision is the ability to scale quality to the demands of high-volume streaming for virtual events. Dolby has recently made several platform improvements to Dolby.io to support significantly more participants for audio and video, or audio-only. The acquisition of Millicast now brings consistent, field-tested ultra-low-latency so that audiences – small or large – can receive high-quality, interactive experiences.
Developers can try this out immediately, with sample code, at this link.
www.dolby.io
www.dolby.com
