Wowza Streaming Engine (Linux BYOL)

What do you like best about the product?

Wowza is a very powerful and secure all-in-one streaming solution that’s also easy to use.

What do you dislike about the product?

I think it’s a bit expensive. I’m working for a client and providing them a Wowza-based media streaming solution, but the pricing is still a bit concerning.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I am a freelancer, and I always recommend Wowza to my clients who want the best media streaming solution.

What do you like best about the product?

The best thing that I like is that the flexibility to add our custom code so that we override some of the functions and achieve some output in a different or customised way. For example extracting the HLS, CMAF chunks using their PushPublishHTTPCupertino class so that we can easily upload these chunks to S3 or whatever storage.

What do you dislike about the product?

The most irritating part is when we reach out to their customer support. Even for a simple issue they keep asking all the config and log files for review. But I don't know if they really spend to review all these files or if they really use these files to reproduce the issue on their side. Basically, dealing with their support person sometimes really becomes tedious. Also it is really difficult to convince them about the bug that we identify in Wowza. Another thing is sometimes it happens that with their new releases they keep adding the bugs in a workflow, which was working fine in their previous versions and that becomes really frustrating. And they keep insisting us to upgrade to their latest versions, which is not possible everytime when we have it running in the production systems. Every now and them we can not spend time to test their latest versions and push it to production.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

They really solves the end-to-end video streaming problems when it comes to different types of protocols. As said previously the flexibility or the control that we get to add our custom code module benefits us a lot, which is really difficult when we chose to work with other streaming services.

What do you like best about the product?

I like that it can take in and push out many different protocols, which makes it flexible to use in a variety of setups.

What do you dislike about the product?

The refresh and page-load rate when using stream targets.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

It was easy to get a Wowza Streaming Media Engine instance up and running right away, and then move it into production without much hassle.

What do you like best about the product?

We have been using Wowza Streaming Engine for many years and for our self-hosted live stream it has been a robust and stable solution with no performance issues.

What do you dislike about the product?

First time setup was not easy, but we had our live stream working within a day using the provided easy to follow documentation.

Upgrading Wowza Streaming Engine with the various Java updates and installing the Streamlock certificate was a challenge, but the one and only time I contacted Wowza support the issue was sorted out within 24hrs.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Wowza Streaming Engine is benefiting us by being a high performance, high-quality output solution that integrates with all our other software so we can stream to global audiences.

What do you like best about the product?

I really like that the customer support is always quick and helpful, and they go beyond just a quick resolution. It's clear that they're striving for the best product to best serve their clients. Wowza Streaming Engine works well with just about every encoder type we use and integrates easily with our own custom software. The initial setup was super easy; barely an inconvenience. We started with Wowza and, though we've considered and tried other products, Wowza continues to fit our use cases the best.

What do you dislike about the product?

Enterprise authentication and SSO integration would add some strength to the platform.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Wowza Streaming provides a real-time, low-latency video viewing experience, solving the problem of high-latency or waiting for physical media.

What do you like best about the product?

My favorite thing about Wowza is the reliability. I never have to wonder if the service is going to work correctly...It just does.

What do you dislike about the product?

There is not a single thing that I could say negatively about Wowza.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

We use Wowza as a delivery mechanism for our live streaming. We encode a single feed and deliver it to their servers and they handle the M3U8 adaptive bitrate playlist for us and deliver it to all the media outlets we use.

What do you like best about the product?

Our company likes how user friendly wowza is.

What do you dislike about the product?

That at times it does have wifi connection errors.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

It allows our focus groups to be streamed from anywhere around the world for our clients.

What do you like best about the product?

Everything that works, it just works. It's affordable, and covers everything in the main path for streaming video.

What do you dislike about the product?

The interface is a bit clunky. Support does their job, but could be better.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Ingesting via RTMP and transcoding outputs to HTTP formats

What do you like best about the product?

We used Wowza Streaming to manage access to our subscriber-only videos, both for live masterclasses and streaming broadcasts.

We particularly appreciated the numerous configuration options, including the creation of secure links to allow only authorized users to view the content. It is a comprehensive solution that allows for the management of both live streams and streaming content, making it ready-to-use and suitable for different purposes.

As with any system of this type, a bit of time investment is required initially for installation and configuration. But once in place, we did not encounter any particular problems: the operation remained stable and reliable.

What do you dislike about the product?

An added benefit would be the ability to perform automatic updates, as doing them manually takes a bit of time and requires a minimum of know-how.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Allows broadcasting both live streams and recorded streams without having to store different versions on the disk. From the source, it generates and caches all necessary files (HLS, etc.), without occupying additional disk space.

What do you like best about the product?

I use Wowza Streaming for delivering reliable live streaming services across multiple devices and platforms, which helps us manage and distribute streaming content efficiently. During our upgrade, the platform's support team was very helpful, and the process was smooth and easy. I like how reliable the streaming platform is, offering good performance and flexibility. The support or customer service is great, as they are very helpful whenever something goes wrong. They successfully helped us with a folder mismatch issue during an upgrade, providing clear communication that was very helpful.

What do you dislike about the product?

Some configurations are complex and require technical knowledge, especially during setup and upgrade. Initially, it was very difficult to understand after setup.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use Wowza Streaming for reliable live streaming across devices, making content management efficient. The support team minimizes disruptions during upgrades. Its flexibility and smooth upgrades are valuable, though initial setup is complex.