Support for Microsoft Edge ORTC is Here!

LiveSwitch Inc. is pleased to announce that IceLink now supports plug-in-free ORTC-based audio and video streaming for the upcoming Microsoft Edge Browser on Windows 10.

“We have always said that as soon as Microsoft announced support for ORTC, we would as well,” said Ted Venema, VP of Business Development for LiveSwitch Inc. “We are pleased that the time has come and IceLink now supports plug-in-free audio and video streaming in Edge using the same API IceLink has today.”

Plug-ins will still be required for Internet Explorer applications but IceLink’s support for the plug-in-free ORTC environment, along with IceLink’s current plug-in for Internet Explorer provides support for both browsers. This allows Internet Explorer users to seamlessly migrate from Internet Explorer to the plug-in-free Edge environment over time.

ORTC and the WebRTC standard supported by Chrome, Firefox and Opera do not provide the same API. IceLink eliminates this problem by providing a single peer-to-peer streaming API that covers WebRTC/ORTC browsers, Internet Explorer, Safari on Mac, as well as native iOS, Android, .NET, Mac and Xamarin environments. Once Edge is released, current customers need only update to the latest version of IceLink to take advantage of ORTC support – there are no API changes.

Video in Microsoft Edge ORTC is not fully compatible with other browsers. As a result, IceLink supports audio conferencing across all browser and native platforms including Edge, but video conferencing is currently limited to Edge browsers. Edge only supports the Skype variant of the H.264 codec, which is not compatible with other browsers and native platforms. Microsoft has announced plans to update Edge to a more broadly compatible version of H.264. When this happens IceLink will seamlessly take advantage of the new H.264 support, providing additional interoperability with H.264 support in other browsers as well as native platforms.