OTT tech firm DaCast buys video hosting specialist vzaar

DaCast, a software-as-a-service firm offering video hosting and livestreaming solutions, announced today that it’s buying video hosting platform vzaar. "We are excited to welcome vzaar into the DaCast family," said DaCast CEO Stephane Roulland in a statement. "This acquisition will enable us to offer the best possible streaming experience to our customers. “DaCast was founded in 2010 as a competitively priced video hosting/livestreaming platform. The company offers Akamai CDN delivery, low-latency HLS livestreaming, monetization paywall with support for multiple currencies and languages, real-time analytics and streaming to multiple platforms simultaneously. DaCast said that through its vzaar acquisition it will be able to offer small- to medium-sized businesses access to better online video tools. In November, DaCast began offering HLS Direct along with a free HLS-compatible encoder. Based on OBS Studio (an open-source RTMP encoder), DaCast’s HLS encoder includes all OBS mixing and production tools, plug-ins and extensions.In May, DaCast upgraded its video player to offer better livestreaming performance and an improved user interface.