Wowza Streaming Engine

Wowza Streaming Engine (known as Wowza Media Server prior to version 4) is a unified streaming media server software developed by Wowza Media Systems. The server is used for streaming of live and on-demand video, audio, and rich Internet applications over IP networks to desktop, laptop, and tablet computers, mobile devices, IPTV set-top boxes, internet-connected TV sets, game consoles, and other network-connected devices. The server is a Java application deployable on most operating systems.

Version 1.0.x was released on February 19, 2007. This version was originally offered as an alternative to the Adobe Flash Media Server, and supported streamed video, audio and RIA’s for the Flash Player client playback and interaction based on the (RTMP) using content encoded with Spark and VP6 codecs. The original product name was Wowza Media Server Pro.

Version 1.5.x was released on May 15, 2008 and added support for H.264 video and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) audio, and ingest support for (RTSP), (RTP), MPEG transport stream (MPEG-TS), and ICY (SHOUTcast/Icecast) sources for re-streaming to the Flash Player client.

Version 2.0.x was released on December 17, 2009. The product name was changed to Wowza Media Server 2. This version added outbound H.264 streaming support for Apple HTTP Live Streaming protocol for iOS devices (iPad, iPhone, etc.), Microsoft HTTP Smooth Streaming for Silverlight player, RTSP/RTP for QuickTime Player and 3GPP mobile devices based on Android, BlackBerry (RIM), Symbian (Symbian Foundation), Palm webOS (now owned by HP), and other platforms, and TV set-top boxes and video game consoles.