Bradmax — The Commercial Video Player Overview
The series continues! Around this time last year, I started with a 6-part blog series about commercial video players. It turns out, the series has to continue, as Bradmax has launched their Video Player onto the market! So let’s dive in and see what Bradmax has to offer regarding video players.
A little recap
Before we start looking at Bradmax, let me just take a short moment to remind you how this blog series works. In this series, we look at several topics that are important when it comes to video players. Namely, we look at the following: Supported Platforms, Feature-set, Third Party Integrations, Ease of Use and Pricing. For each of these topics, we’ll look at what in this case Bradmax has to offer. But before we do — a quick introduction to the company that is Bradmax.
About Bradmax
If you look at the website of Bradmax, you’ll see some very big numbers to boast with — used on 3000+ websites, spanning across 40+ countries and with 20+ years of experience. That’s quite a lot if you ask me! It made me wonder why I hadn’t heard from them before. Luckily, I had the opportunity to speak with the CEO and CTO of Bradmax. They explained the road to where they are now. Having a history of working with/for Xstream for many years, they felt it was the right time to start their own venture. This started out with a company called ‘Bigsoda’, ultimately resulting in the official launch of the Bradmax Media Player at IBC in 2022.
Bradmax has seen some great implementations of their player. With 3SS integrating their player for a major TV service provider, and Allente/Canal Digital using Bradmax technology for their clients, they are working with some of the biggest companies in the media industry.
The reason you might not have seen much of Bradmax when it comes to marketing is rather interesting. Their DNA has them focus the majority of their capabilities on technology, whereas other companies might put significant resources into marketing and attracting new clients. Bradmax is different, in the sense that they’d rather have their technology solutions do the talking. So let’s take a look and see what they have to offer.
Supported Platforms
Contrary to what you might expect with a new video player on the market, Bradmax actually supports the majority of platforms — even the bigger SmartTV platforms. You’ll be able to use their player on the regular Android, iOS and Web platforms. Talking SmartTV, Bradmax has integrations available for Samsung Tizen, LG WebOS, Android TV and Fire TV.
Notably missing from that list, is Apple TV. While Bradmax is able to support iOS, they are not able to support tvOS with their current solution. Bradmax requires a webview for iOS (as well as Android), which loads an HTML5 player. Given that tvOS does not allow the use of webviews, it’s currently impossible to support Apple TV this way.
Feature set
Since Bradmax uses their web (HTML5) player on all platforms, the supporting feature set really is well aligned across platforms. So whether we are talking DRM, low latency, advertisement support, chapter markers or subtitles, it’s all available across platforms. Yes, you’ll still have differences between mobile (which will support casting) and SmartTV (which has to deal with focus management for certain features), but you’ll have the majority of features available on all platforms.
Third Party Integrations
With a lot of experience in the industry, come a lot of third party integrations. Bradmax does very well on analytics integrations with Comscore, Conviva, Nielsen, Google Analytics and more being readily available. Also on the advertisement part, you’ll see quite some support set and ready to go, with Yospace, Freewheel and Google ads to use. In principle, you can use any VAST/VMAP specification with Bradmax, and you should be good to go. In terms of DRM, a recent announcement outlined a partnership between EZDRM and Bradmax. Next to that, buyDRM, Synamedia and SeaChange are also in the supported DRM providers list.
Ease of Use
The way to use the Bradmax Media Player obviously depends on the platform. For both Android and iOS, you’ll need to use a small library that then takes in either a local or remote reference to the javascript library that contains the HTML5 player. After that setup, the use of both the Android and iOS library is actually rather similar. They follow a structure with similar methods, making it rather easy for an Android and iOS developer to work together at the same time.
On the Web/SmartTV side, you’ll have a few different options for using the player. It’s possible to embed the player with an iframe for easy use on websites. If you’d prefer more control over the player, you can use the same javascript library as used for Android and iOS. This comes with a bunch of configuration options and functions to control the player in the way you prefer.
Pricing
As with most of the companies offering a video player, the pricing all depends on the usage. Bradmax looks on a case-per-case basis to see what pricing fits best, so I can’t provide any specific numbers or even tiers here.
Conclusion
A surprise entry into the market of video players, but definitely not a bad one! Bradmax’s approach of using an HTML5 player has quite some benefits, with features very easily becoming available across all platforms. You can see this back in the availability of low latency, chapter markers and others, across all platforms. The biggest downside of that approach does mean you can not get any Apple TV support, except for maybe mobile being able to cast to it with Airplay. Regardless, Bradmax has a compelling offer, with their technical experience and expertise being a great benefit to have at your disposal.
Closing words
Thanks a bunch for reading this blog! If you’re interested in any of the other entries in the commercial video player series, you can find all individual entries right here.
Need any additional help with your choice of video player, or want to talk about SmartTV, Lightning, or OTT apps in general? You can reach me through email at matthijs.langendijk@wearetriple.com, or find me on LinkedIn.
Interested in more?
