DASH 2015: Where are We at and what Next

MPEG-DASH has promise as a multi bitrate format supporting a wide range of features including live, on demand, DRM, captions and more that would supersede existing standards such as Smooth Streaming, HDS and HLS. It now has wide ranging support from major software and device manufacturers with the notable exception being Apple. While it is now possible to have DASH play on just about any device the implementation to date has not been consistent. This is partially due to MPEG-DASH the standard having been developed by many parties with specific existing requirements. One of the issues is that as a specification that has many variations, every player developer is free to support the parts of the specification that they require and as a result what works for one player doesn't work on another. One of the particularly large issues that is emerging in this area is the adoption of DRM in the browser and what is looking to be a very fragmented adoption of Media Source Extensions, Encrypted Media Extensions and Content Decryption Modules. This paper covers an overview on where we are at in regard to existing variations on the DASH standard, what is available in the content generation tool chain, what players we have supporting what elements of the standard and what is developing in the coming year in regard to DRM.

Published

2015-07

Content type

Original Research

Keywords

Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP, DASH, DRM, Encrypted Media Extensions, EME, Media Source Extensions, MSE, Content Decryption Module, CDM, MPEG-DASH, Common Encryption, CENC, Smooth Streaming, HTTP Dynamic Streaming, HDS

DOI

10.5594/M001598

ISBN

978-1-61482-955-3