MPEG-DASH Content Steering on web

This article explains how to implement MPEG-DASH Content Steering with THEOplayer Web SDK.

MPEG-DASH Content Steering allows the player to communicate with a steering server to receive a personalized priority list for all the available CDN endpoints. This helps optimize the streaming experience by directing the player to use the best possible CDN based on various factors such as network conditions, user location, and server load.

Enabling/Disabling Content Steering

By default, Content Steering in MPEG-DASH is enabled, however, it can be explicitly enabled or disabled using a flag in your SourceDescription.

You can also override the clientRequirement="false" property in the MPEG-DASH manifest to enable Content Steering for a specific playback session. by explicitly setting it to true.

player.source = {
    sources: {
        src: 'https://your-dash-source-with-content-steering.mpd',
        dash: {
            contentSteering: true // Default is true; set to false to disable.
        }
    }
};

Events for Content Steering

THEOplayer provides events to monitor the Content Steering process. For more details, check the API documentation.

player.addEventListener('contentsteeringstart', console.log)
player.addEventListener('contentsteeringstop', console.log)
player.addEventListener('contentsteeringlocationchange', console.log)
player.addEventListener('contentsteeringupdate', console.log)
player.addEventListener('contentsteeringerror', console.log)

Known Limitations

• PATHWAY-CLONE from the Content Steering server response is not supported yet.
• Extended HTTP GET request parametrization instructions are not supported yet. You can add custom parameters to Content Steering requests by using a RequestInterceptor to intercept and modify network requests with the type content-steering.
• Targeting a specific set of clients as part of a ServiceDescription element is not supported.