Once every few years, a new programming platform emerges with a set of advantages. The latest platform, best suited for Web pages including Video, is called HTML5.

Actus Digital believes that its products must always remain the most advanced and at the forefront of technology and has therefore adopted the HTML5 standard. What does this standard bring to our customers ?

A short history of Actus platforms

Since its first production-ready product in 2006, Actus opted for the Flash™ environment (released in 1996) which, at the time, offered the most interactive user experience in working with Video. This was the Actus-3™ product.

In 2010, Actus introduced a renewed Actus-4™ product line, based on the Microsoft™ Silverlight™ (announced in 2007), which added a set of features that helped make the Actus products faster, more reactive, and with the richest feature set of all the Broadcast monitoring systems (frame accuracy, fast forward x64, multiple audio and subtitles, and alike).

In 2016, Actus came to the conclusion that the HTML5 platform, announced in 2007 but becoming an accepted standard in 2010, has reached a level of maturity outperforming both Flash™ and Silverlight™, and Actus decided to develop its latest product, Actus-5™, based on HTML5.

The Actus-5 advantages:

The main reason for creating the Actus-5™ product is that it would provide Actus users with a number of tangible advantages, compared to Silverlight™ and Flash™:

  • Better user experience, responsive, faster
  • Completely new User Interface, based on the latest UI standards
  • No need to install any plug-in on the user’s client machine
  • Agnostic to browsers version changes
  • Better compatibility with the latest browsers
  • Compatibility with both PC and MAC as well as iPad and Smartphones

Customer positive feedback on Actus-5

This is an actual, unsolicited quote, received December 2016 from a long time Northern European customer that was among the first to test Actus-5™

“I have been using the HTML5 interface exclusively now, it is very responsive and needs less clicks than the Silverlight interface. Only good impressions so far, nothing bad to say, really, which in my case is weird, because I always manage to find at least something that doesn’t work as well as it should. I think you have created a very good product, which is really not surprising, knowing your track record so far.”

Backward Compatibility

Actus has invested efforts into maintaining the backward compatibility of theActus-5TM product. Switching to Actus-5TM will be transparent to the end users and all the existing Media, clips and data will continue to be accessible. Furthermore, client-workstations running Actus-4TM can run side-by-side with the newer client-workstations running Actus-5™.

Thus customers requiring some new functionalities, need not replace all their existing Actus-4™ licenses. They can just add a few licenses of Actus-5™.

This represents a meaningful advantage of Actus compared to all other vendors. Given that HTML5 is not yet fully matured, and given that some HTML5 elements, including the new tag, are not currently capable of the advanced features such as streaming, captions, and interactive playback that Flash and Silverlight support.

Not requiring any plug-ins is a major advantage

In the past, many plugins were developed using a system called NPAPI. These have caused security risks on websites. To make browsing with Chrome safer, faster, and more stable, Google stopped allowing NPAPI plugins on September 1, 2015.

Plugins that use NPAPI, including Silverlight, Java, and Unity, do not work on Chrome.

Actus decided to develop a completely new client side product, Actus-5™, based on the HTML5 platform, that does not use NPAPI or any plug-in.

This advantage is not to be underestimated. We are familiar with other vendors’ systems that require additional plug-ins. This effectively means that with every change of browser, or even with every change of the browser’s version (like changing from IE10 to IE11), the customer needs to re-install new plug-ins on each and every client workstation. One of the existing customers of that vendor claim that this is a very serious disadvantage of theirs.

Luckily, with the Actus-5™, we can offer a real plug and play experience (without the plug-in…) ready to run on any PC, MAC, iPad, smartphone.

HTML5 is an open standard

Unlike Flash™, developed by one company (Macromedia), and unlike Silverlight™, also developed by a single company (Microsoft™), The specification for HTML is developed by an open standards development consortium that relies on feedback, allowing developers to shape the future growth of HTML. Actus believes that this will result in more openness, connectivity to 3rd party products, and a more user friendly platform overall.

The acceptance of HTML5 as a de-facto standard is perhaps dated back to April 2010 when the late Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple™, stated that

“Adobe Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content …new open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win.”

YouTube™ too, used to be Flash™ based and now uses mostly HTML5. If your browser supports HTML5, then YouTube uses the newer HTML5 video playback features.

YouTube announced:

“We are very excited about HTML5 as an open standard and want to be part of moving HTML5 forward on the web.”

Actus is proud to offer its customers its newest product, Actus-5™, based on the latest technology, HTML5.