• Industry’s fastest, full-featured video player now has unified feature delivery across HTML5, Flash and native iOS/Android, along with new skin and enhanced publishing/monetization options

• New version includes robust Section 508 compliance and WAI-ARIA support, making it the ideal player for fulfilling web accessibility requirements

• New Player Factory site makes it easier for users and developers to extend and customize the Kaltura video player

• Kaltura will showcase future MPEG-DASH capabilities at IBC 2013 - designed to improve live streaming to connected devices

Kaltura Inc., the leading open source video platform vendor, today announced a new version of the Kaltura Video Player, as well as the launch of the Player Factory, a new player-focused site that makes it easier for users and developers to extend and customize the Kaltura video player. Kaltura’s market-leading video player is in use by some of the world’s largest organizations and websites, including ABC News, Wikipedia, Harvard and SAP.

Following Kaltura’s early adoption of the HTML5 video standard, and the company’s leadership role in the HTML5 community with its industry resource www.html5video.org, the latest version of the Kaltura Video Player enables delivery of HTML5 with chromeless components for Flash, iOS and Android. This finally enables users to lead with HTML5 and provide the fastest viewing experience on any device, while maintaining all the same features and a consistent CSS/HTML player design.

The new video player also includes robust Section 508 compliance and support for w3c’s Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) standard, which defines a way to make Web content and Web applications more accessible to people with disabilities. The player has been comprehensively tested with screen readers and by the disabled community and accessibility experts. The fact that Kaltura’s player leads with HTML5 makes it much easier to adopt accessibility features, when compared to most Flash UI-based players. For example, Kaltura’s new player delivers a great keyboard input experience for users unable to use a mouse and a seamless browser-managed experience for better integration with web accessibility tools. The player also has keyboard shortcuts for all main player functions and player plug-ins.

The new Player Factory site showcases all features and plug-ins related to the company’s market-leading video player. This includes demos and code snippets for users and developers looking to create the optimal video player experience.

At IBC, Kaltura will also demo its MPEG-DASH capabilities, ahead of a planned launch later this year. Live streaming from the web helps to further engage viewers, deliver higher CPMs and create a massive social footprint and Kaltura is at the forefront of this space with its MPEG-DASH development. Adding support for the MPEG-DASH standard to the video player will enable adaptive streaming from browsers such as IE 11, Chrome and Firefox and improve live and VOD streaming to connected devices such as smartphones and smart TVs as well as delivery content controls (DRM) through webviews via HTML5 encrypted media extension.

Other enhancements to the latest version of the Kaltura Video Player include:

• More Publishing Options - including QR codes for easy mobile player previews, new iFrame and thumbnail embeds, and SEO markup;
• Monetization Advances - Kaltura now provides support for the VAST 3.0 format for both Flash and HTML5, with features like ad-pods (consecutive ads). Kaltura also includes VPAID 2.0 support, enabling rich in-ad interactive experiences;
• Live Streaming to Any Device – deeper and more seamless integration of live streaming into Kaltura’s player, to easily provide live broadcasts on any device;
• Digital Rights Management (DRM) – Kaltura has enhanced its integration with Google Widevine to provide maximum protection for premium content to help prevent unauthorized distribution and piracy.

“As we continue to expand our platform, together with our global developer community, there is a clear focus on both performance and functionality,” said Kaltura Chairman and CEO, Ron Yekutiel. “The winning combination of our new, enhanced player, our MPEG-DASH plans and the new Player Factory site will ensure that our customers can enjoy all the great bells and whistles without compromising on performance both now and in the future.”

The Kaltura video player is the fastest loading video player, with seamless video delivery across all leading devices. Kaltura’s HTML5 video player library features an advanced resource loader developed in collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation. This resource loader supports dynamic packing of modules, features and player metadata. The loader also packages CSS, images, HTML, JavaScript, metadata, and per player features into a single non-blocking payload. This, combined with Kaltura's AutoEmbed embed code, delivers fast player rendering even on sites with many other active script includes, ultimately providing best in class performance of all player features, without the delays in traditional feature-rich player build out.

About Kaltura

Kaltura provides the world’s first Open Source Online Video Platform, transforming the way people work, learn, and entertain using online video. The Kaltura platform engages hundreds of millions of viewers by providing media companies advanced video management, publishing, and monetization tools that increase their reach and monetization and simplify their video operations. Kaltura improves productivity and interaction among millions of employees by providing enterprises powerful online video tools for boosting internal knowledge sharing, training, and collaboration, and for more effective marketing. Kaltura offers next generation learning for millions of students and teachers by providing educational institutions disruptive online video solutions for improved teaching, learning, and increased engagement across campuses and beyond.  Kaltura was recently recognized in Forbes as ‘one of the six fastest growing tech companies’, in VentureBeat as a ‘Next Billion Dollar Enterprise Tech Company’, in Business-Insider as ‘one of top 5 startups revolutionizing education’ and ‘one of 5 greatest open-source technologies for 2012’, in Mashable as ‘one of top 5 social enterprise technologies for business’ and in Fast Company as ‘one of the 10 most innovative companies in Israel’. For more information: www.kaltura.com, to join Kaltura’s community visit: www.kaltura.org and www.html5video.org.