Today we are releasing version 1.2 of the JW Player SDK for Android. This version focuses on improvements in performance, flexibility, stability, and adds the following features:
- Faster HLS Video Startup. 5x faster adaptive HLS video startup with minimal buffering.
- Improved HLS playback performance.
- Second-precise seeking
- Improved support for advanced HLS features, such as discontinuities
- Takes the current CPU load into account when determining which HLS stream variant to play
- Improved bandwidth detection heuristics for faster adaptivity and optimal resolutions
- Show/hide player control bar. Added an API method for showing and hiding the media player control bar.
How Much Faster? A Side-by-side Comparison
The following “HLS Startup Speed” video compares the native Android Media Player to our JW Player using the latest JW Player SDK for Android 1.2 version.
The native Android Media Player is playing in the Google Chrome browser app v.43 with the video embedded using the HTML5 “video” tag.
JW Player is playing in our JW Player Android Demo app v.1.2 using the JW Player SDK for Android v.1.2.
Both apps are playing the same HLS video on the Samsung Galaxy S5 SM-G900H with Android 5.0; the Wi-Fi bandwidth was throttled using Charles Web Debugging Proxy v.3.10.1 to the standard 3G (1024 kbps) setting.
Tell Me More.
This 1.2 release also contains a number of bug fixes (details are included in the readme.txt file contained in the SDK download package), so we encourage all customers to upgrade.
If you are an existing JW Player SDK for Android customer, you can always sign in to your JW Player Dashboard and download the latest SDK version from your Account tab. Otherwise, if you’d like more information to purchase or get a free trial of our SDKs, please visit our Mobile SDK page or contact our sales team.
Your feedback is welcome and encouraged as we continue to improve and enhance the JW Player SDK for Android with regular feature and performance updates!
Henry Lee,
Product Manager, Mobile Devices