Case Study: PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) delivers Apple HTTP Live Streaming to iOS 300% faster with Zencoder

Zencoder helps PBS lead in Apple® HTTP Live Streaming Adoption

PBS, a leader in multi-platform video distribution, struggled to prepare content for iOS devices—especially meeting Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) requirements. Despite serving tens of millions of streams to its iPad apps, PBS’s previous vendor frequently failed to properly segment low-bitrate and audio-only streams, produced slow encodes, and provided unresponsive support, forcing PBS to find a more reliable encoding partner.

PBS chose Zencoder for its S3 integration, robust API and HLS expertise; Zencoder resolved segmentation and stream idiosyncrasies and leveraged AWS to speed processing. As a result, encoding is at least 300% faster, enabling time-sensitive shows like PBS NewsHour to appear on iPad and iPhone about an hour after airing, and Zencoder now handles PBS’s growing HLS library.

PBS