Update:
JW Player is dedicated to protecting your content with DRM support. JW Player 7.5+ provides support for Apple FairPlay, Clearkey, Google Widevine, and Microsoft PlayReady DRM. We also support Apple Fairplay through our iOS SDK and Google Widevine through our Android SDK.
Use this Stream Tester on the developer site to test DRM functionality with JW Player in HTML5 or Flash mode.
To learn more about DRM configuration & setup, check out this article on our support site.
This week’s release of JW Player 7.5 adds support for FairPlay Streaming (FPS) DRM to our HTML5 player. This functionality enables users to play content that is encrypted with FairPlay DRM in Safari for Mac OS X.
On iOS, FPS is only supported in native applications, so we have added support for FPS to our native JW Player SDK for iOS, as well. FPS is only supported on Apple platforms.)
Our customers increasingly ask us about DRM support in our products, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to post an update on the DRMs that we support across the JW product family.
The most popular DRMs for web content are Google Widevine, Microsoft PlayReady and Apple FPS. By supporting these three DRMs, we are able to meet the requirements of the vast majority of web publishers. Adobe Primetime is supported in Firefox, but we have not seen significant demand for Primetime support. In addition, Google Widevine was recently added to Firefox, and since Widevine has significant market adoption due to its inclusion in Chrome and Android, we believe that publishers will use Widevine in Firefox instead of Primetime. As such, we have also extended support for Google Widevine to Firefox browsers in 7.5.
On the Android front, we have added support for Google Widevine DRM to our latest native Android SDKs.
The following tables outline which DRMs that we support by product. Note that our support for each DRM is constrained by what the DRM makers themselves support. For example, Apple supports FPS in Safari on Mac OS, but not in Safari on iOS.
JW Player for Web
DRM
Browsers
Google Widevine
Chrome 35+ (desktop and Android)
Firefox 47+ (Windows, Mac only)
Microsoft Playready
Internet Explorer 11+ (Windows 8.1+ only)
Microsoft Edge 12+ (Windows desktop and Phone)
Apple FairPlay Streaming (FPS)
Safari 11+ on OS X
Adobe Primetime
Not supported due to lack of customer demand.
JW Player SDKs for Android and iOS
DRM
OS versions
Google Widevine
Android v4.3+
Apple FairPlay Streaming (FPS)
Apple iOS v8+
Microsoft Playready
Not supported due to lack of customer demand.
Adobe Primetime
Not supported due to lack of customer demand.
Historically, the DRM landscape was notoriously fragmented due to its underlying technologies being proprietary to each DRM vendor. This fragmentation is improving, though, as more publishers and technology vendors adopt open standards such as HTML5, fragmented MP4 (fMP4), Common Encryption, Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) and Media Source Extensions (MSE). In another major step forward, Apple announced in June that their HTTP Live Streaming protocol will add support for fMP4, which will improve media interoperability between HLS and MPEG-DASH (a major adaptive streaming standard that supports DRM).
Looking Ahead
However, the media industry still needs a single collection of open, royalty-free standards and guidelines for DRM in HTML5 applications. Several groups are collaborating to achieve this not only for DRM, but all HTML5-related video technologies. The progress of the CMAF file format standard within MPEG is encouraging, as is the formation of the WAVE Project. JW Player is proud to be a contributor to the WAVE HTML5 API Task Force.
Eric Boyd is Director of Product for JW Player. John Luther is SVP of Product Strategy.