JW Playeris aNew Yorkbased company that has developed avideo player softwareof the same name.[1]The player, for embedding videos ontoweb pages,is used by news,video hostingcompanies, and for self-hostedweb videos. The company has also created the video management software "JW Platform", formerly known as "Bits On The Run".[2]

JW Player
Company typePrivate
Founded2005;19 years ago(2005)
FounderJeroen Wijering
HeadquartersNew York City,New York
Websitejwplayer

History

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JW Player was developed in 2005, initially as anopen-sourceproject.[2]In December 2015, JW Player stated that their software is no longer offered with an open-source license; instead it is offered with aCreative Commons licensefor non-commercial use.[3][4]The software is named after the founder and initial developer Jeroen Wijering.[5]It initially was distributed via Wijering's blog. In about 2007 it was integrated into the advertising company named LongTail, which was renamed after the software in 2013. In 2008 a company, headquartered in New York, was formed which continued to develop and distribute the player.[6]

During the early development, before it was purchased by Google,YouTubevideos were streamed by JW Player.[7][8]In 2015, JW Player was rewritten to reduce size and load time. Version 7 was licensed under the proprietary Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. It had integrated support forHTML videoandFlash Video,[9]allowing video to be watched on phones, tablets and computers. That year the company's paying customer base grew by more than 40 percent to 15,000, 60% from the USA. 2.5 million websites used the free edition, playing about a billion videos per month.[9][10]

In 2016, the company released a new simpler-to-use version of its product, entitled JW Showcase.[8]JW Player continues to be used by many companies, includingESPN,[7]Electronic Arts,andAT&T.

Features and licensing

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JW Player isproprietary software.There is a basicfree of costversion distributed under theCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States(CC BY-NC-SA)[11]license in which videos are displayed with an overlaid companywatermark,and a commercial 'software as a service' version.

JW Player supportsMPEG-DASH(only in paid version),Digital rights management(DRM) (in collaboration with Vualto), interactive advertisement, and customization of the interface throughCascading Style Sheets.[9]

References

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  1. ^Cheredar, Tom (17 September 2014)."With $20M, JW Player wants video publishers to look past YouTube".VentureBeat.Retrieved14 April2015.
  2. ^abRyan Lawler, 24. October 2013:LongTail Video Rebrands As JW Player Because That’s What Customers Know Them For.Archived.
  3. ^Walch, Rob (2015-12-22)."Software License".GitHub.Archivedfrom the original on 2020-11-18.
  4. ^Walch, Rob (2020-12-22)."Please remove" open source "from README.md".GitHub.Archivedfrom the original on 2020-11-18.
  5. ^Jocelyn Johnson (VideoInk), 18. January 2016:5Qs with JW Player’s Jeroen Wijering and Chris Mahl
  6. ^"JW Player Raises $20M To Help Video Publishers Look Beyond YouTube".Tech Crunch,Sep 17, 2014 by Anthony Ha
  7. ^ab"How JW Player became the largest video player behind YouTube and Facebook".The Drum,7 August 2015 by Natan Edelsburg
  8. ^ab"JW Player’s New “JW Showcase” Further Enables DIY Streaming Services ".VideoInkJocelyn Johnson | Aug 23, 2016
  9. ^abcTroy Dreier (Streaming Media Magazine), 13. August 2015:JW Player 7 Released, With DASH Support and Speed Improvements
  10. ^Anthony Ha (TechCrunch), 5. January 2016:JW Player Raises $20M To Expand Its Video Platform
  11. ^"license specification of non-commercial version, Github".GitHub.
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