High Efficiency Streaming Protocol
High Efficiency Streaming Protocol (HESP)
High Efficiency Streaming Protocol (HESP) is an adaptive bitrate streaming technique that enables high-quality streaming of media content over the Internet delivered from conventional HTTP web servers[1], just like HLS and DASH. The technology was developed by THEO Technologies and made available via the HESP Alliance, which has Synamedia and THEO Technologies as founding members[2]
.
Architecture
HESP leverages two complementary streams: an initialization stream and a continuation stream. The initialization stream is a stream with all keyframes. This stream is only used at startup. At that moment, the most recent image available in the initialization stream is requested[3]. As the initialization stream’s images are all keyframes, playback can start immediately, resulting in very fast channel start and switch times. Subsequently, through a range request, images are requested from the continuation stream[4], a regularly encoded stream for low latency purposes. HESP is delivered over HTTP/1.1. It uses Chunked Transfer Encoding (CTE) at a very granular level, i.e. each chunk is a frame, to allow for ultra-low latency delivery. HESP requires implementation in the packager and player, and support for range requests and CTE in the CDN.
Standardization
Work on HESP started in 2018; it became an IETF information draft in May 2021[5].
The HESP Alliance, launched in 2020, promotes and catalyzes the adoption of HESP. It consists of streaming vendors and media companies, including Synamedia, THEO Technologies, G-Core Labs, EZDRM, Mainstreaming, NativeWaves and Hoki. The HESP Alliance technical working group is focused on further advancing the HESP standard[6].
References
- ^ "HESP Alliance". HESP Alliance. Retrieved 2023-02-07.
- ^ "[PRESS RELEASE] THEO Technologies and Synamedia form HESP Alliance". www.theoplayer.com. Retrieved 2023-02-07.
- ^ "HESP - High Efficiency Streaming Protocol". IETF Datatracker. Retrieved 2023-02-07.
- ^ "HESP - High Efficiency Streaming Protocol". IETF Datatracker. Retrieved 2023-02-07.
- ^ "High Efficiency Streaming Protocol (HESP)". IABM. Retrieved 2023-02-07.
- ^ "Members". HESP Alliance. Retrieved 2023-02-07.