JW Player Makes the Pro Edition of Its Flagship Online Video Player Free

NEW YORK, July 29, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- JW Player, a leading digital and mobile video platform and player company, today announced it is making its Pro player edition free of charge, providing customers with increased functionality and value. As part of this pricing change, the industry's most widely distributed digital and mobile video player will include complimentary custom branding capabilities, viewer analytics and video hosting. In addition, JW Player will include its iOS and Android SDKs as part the Enterprise and Ads editions.

"We relentlessly strive to provide the most advanced feature set at the lowest economic cost to our customers," said Dave Otten, CEO of JW Player. "Moving the Pro edition to free is another example of our commitment to this longstanding mission. We believe that every publisher in the world should use JW Player to deliver video to mobile, desktop and OTT devices."

JW Player is providing all content creators and publishers the ability to strategically drive their online video plan. Each tier receives:

• Pro (now offered for free): Full control over player branding (with no JW Player watermark) as well as 9 pre-built skins, social sharing and related videos overlays, 5GB hosting and 25GB streaming, video engagement analytics, player and platform APIs; Current JW Player customers who were utilizing the paid "Pro" version will be upgraded to "Premium" at no additional cost
• Premium (offered at $299/year): All Pro features plus adaptive streaming with DASH (coming in JW7 in August) and HLS streaming with multi-track audio, live with DVR windowing, VTT and 608 captions, direct email support
• Enterprise: All Premium features plus high-volume hosting and streaming, content protection functionality with DRM (coming in JW7) and AES decryption and geo-blocking, Android and iOS SDKs, priority email support
• Ads: All Enterprise features plus high-volume ad delivery, IAB VAST/VPAID support, Google IMA integration, scheduling and waterfalling, ads-enabled mobile SDKs, advertising player APIs

The rise of online video was pioneered by independent content creators, who were passionate about their work, nimble, and early adopters of new technology. As online video surged, it has been these independent content creators who, without significant budgets, are the most impacted by the lack of free analytics and customization options provided by some of the largest video companies. With its new pricing, JW Player aims to give the power back to these creators, who have always served as the foundation for online video, and help the industry expand to new and evolving audiences.

"We work with thousands of the world's biggest and most recognizable brands, a position we reached by focusing on an open video ecosystem and working to make our technology accessible," says Chris Mahl, President of JW Player. "Our success has put us in a position to change our business proposition and provide, for free, services that our competitors charge for or do not offer. All content creators, regardless of their size, deserve the best video functionality available and that's what they will receive with JW Player."

About JW Player
JW Player is the New York-based startup that pioneered video on the web and is now innovating for the future. Started in 2008 as the world's first open source video player, today the company's customers span the globe across 193 countries and range from Fortune 500 companies to individual bloggers. The company's flagship product, JW Player, is live on more than 2 million sites with over 700 million hours of videos watched monthly by over 1.2 billion monthly unique viewers across all devices — phones, tablets, and desktops. Nearly five percent of all video streams worldwide are delivered through JW Player. In addition to the player, the company's services include video hosting and streaming, advertising, and analytics. For more information, see www.jwplayer.com.

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SOURCE JW Player

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