Is there a one size fits all, solution, in live streaming? Certainly no. Back in the days, YouTube was a monopoly – it most definitely defined the market landscape. While YouTube statistics continue to be mind-boggling, from varied parameters, today it is not the only option for video management activities. End user requirements are increasingly rising in complexity – for example, take a look at the requirement of a user as sourced from quora.com (link provided at the end of this post):
We have to be able to:
- Host a 1+Mbps HD livestream for upwards of 80,000 concurrent users (typically 3MM to 5MM total users per major event) without a hiccup. Don’t be fooled by total users, it is the concurrent users that will destroy you in most of the other services
- Not get charged an arm and a leg
- Support mobile devices such as iOS and Android
- Support set top devices like Roku and Boxes Box
- Offer a multi-bitrate solution for those users who can’t get HD from us, but still want to watch the SD video.
The solutions available today offer a range of features. While an elaborate feature set is good, it does not always mean it is the best – you need to make a custom choice depending on your requirements, as some of the features may not be applicable to you at all. There are some such as upload and manage your own videos, mobile compliance”, which are the basic ones to start with. Others such as “PaaS model covering website, apps, hosting, servers, storage, bandwidth, security, CDN, database, user management and marketing tools, hosting unlimited number of videos” which are becoming increasingly common, but ones such as hybrid revenue models that one can probably live without.
You need to first arrive at such a bucketed wish list of what is core to your needs and then compare solutions based on the implementation robustness of such features as opposed to evaluating all the features out of box. A bunch of such solutions are evaluated objectively on this post and of course this was before we launched Phando. We are confident that Phando is a strong competitor to the ones listed here given the feature set and the customization we have been able to offer to our clients. Please reach out to Phando to understand what we offer so we can also understand your needs and we are confident we can arrive at a mutual ground that offers you a very compelling solution from time, cost, and effectiveness standpoints. At the end of the day, you know your requirements best and that is the best point to start your live streaming solutions in India search at.