Like many others, you probably hate when your video stream is interrupted. Or even worse, when you need to get up from your couch to check if you have issues with your internet connection. It’s frustrating to watch the buffering circle and wait till... »
On the Showmax Engineering blog, we try to explain solutions to a pretty specific problem: how to deliver a high quality video streaming in Africa. To make our stories more intelligible, we started the series The Showmax engineering story, with the... »
It’s a challenge to provide a top tier video streaming service across Africa. Quality internet networks are few and far between, server locations are often not ideal (we need to connect very distant countries), peering points are limited, and every... »
Here at Showmax, it’s not all about using third party CDNs. We have our own servers for serving content as well, so the constant question is: “How do we balance all the traffic?” In the past, we used a solution with modulo. To use modulo, we converted... »
Video on Demand (VOD) platforms usually support a wide range of devices. Despite the attempts to unify streaming protocols, DRMs, and other parts of the tech stack, it’s almost impossible to have only one playlist/manifest that fits everyone. The... »
On our blog we usually discuss our work in pretty in-depth terms, or terms that we set on our own. At times, we may speak a language that is unfamiliar, or even unintelligible, to some people. So, we decided to put together a vocabulary resource to... »