THEOplayer adds support for MPEG-5 LCEVC

LONDON, UK, LEUVEN, Belgium — THEO Technologies, on a mission to change the way the world streams video over the Internet, and V-Nova, a leading provider of video compression solutions, today announce that THEO Technologies’ THEOplayer, an award-winning video player, will support for MPEG-5 LCEVC codec enhancement, bringing cutting-edge video playback on any device.

Streaming video services of all kinds are looking to deliver their viewers higher resolution and higher quality video whilst simultaneously maintaining manageable delivery costs. MPEG-5 LCEVC achieves all this at up to 40% lower bitrates, triggering substantial delivery cost savings while also reducing encoding compute and energy consumption by up to 3x. LCEVC operates as an enhancement to all video codecs (H.264, H.265, VP9, AV1 etc.) and can be easily deployed to the vast majority of devices. A demonstration for HTML5 browsers is available on the THEOplayer LCEVC demo page.

While media companies are increasingly expanding into low latency, highly interactive use cases (such as live sports betting, fan engagement during live concerts, online shopping experiences, and live television polls) there is often a trade-off between low latency encoding and a high-quality of experience. This is where MPEG-5 LCEVC (ISO/IEC 23094-2) can be deployed to improve compression efficiency and enhance video quality to enable lower latency.

Today’s release of MPEG-5 LCEVC support in THEOplayer will help THEO Technologies to ensure that its customers can build market-leading video streaming workflows and play these back on HTML5-based platforms, while enjoying all the other THEOplayer benefits, including stable and high-performance playback, more than 200 out of the box integrations for ad insertion, analytics and DRM, and an experienced support team that has their back.

“With THEO Technologies, we don’t compromise on video quality or latency,” said Steven Tielemans, CEO and co-founder of THEO Technologies. “Adding support for the MPEG-5 LCEVC standard to THEOplayer was a logical next step to continue to provide our customers with premium video playback experiences. Innovation is in our DNA, and we highly value working together with a partner such as V-Nova who shares our passion of challenging the status quo.”

“We’re thrilled to see LCEVC support added to another key industry-leading solution,” said Guido Meardi, CEO and co-founder at V-Nova. “Rolling out LCEVC-enhanced services to deliver a step-change upgrade to video experiences is now easier than ever. We look forward to further collaboration with the excellent team at THEO to enable leading service providers to benefit from more efficient video workflows”

Interested parties are invited to visit THEOplayer (5.A67) or the LCEVC showcase (5.D33) at IBC 2022. The demo can also be viewed directly on the THEOplayer LCEVC demo page.