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I have a requirement to develop a Android and iOS mobile apps that allow subscribers to view movies like the way Netflix and Iflix does it.

I would like to know if this can be achieved by inbuilt Video playing classes or widgets on the Android and iOS platforms, or if we will need a library or SDK for this.

I came across this URL on how to stream video in Android apps. Would this approach suffice for this requirement?

https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/streaming-video-in-android-apps--cms-19888

sage
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1 Answers1

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Netflix and similar systems use ABR to deliver video to mobile devices - ABR allows the client device or player download the video in chunks, e.g 10 second chunks, and select the next chunk from the bit rate most appropriate to the current network conditions. See here for an example:

There are several ABR protocols but the two most common at this time are HLS and DASH. HLS must be used to deliver video streams to iOS devices due to the apple guidelines (at this time and for video over 10 mins which may be accessed on a mobile network - the guidelines can change over time) and DASH is probably more common on Android devices, although HLS can be supported on Android also.

Most Android players now can handle ABR - the Android Exoplayer is a good example, is very well used and supports this natively:

Take a look at the Developers Guide (included in the link above at the time of writing) which shows how to include ExoPlayer in your app.

On iOS the native player supports ABR using HLS.

Mick
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