When it comes to live streaming, WebRTC often gets viewed as an unscalable video chat focused protocol. In reality, many of the industry’s assumptions about WebRTC are outdated and focus solely on past applications of WebRTC for niche interactive use cases or video chatting. Phenix implores the industry to consider how far WebRTC applications have come over the years, and to examine the core differences between Phenix’s WebRTC and off-the-shelf WebRTC.
Phenix wrote its own WebRTC protocol implementation and platform for real-time delivery across a wide range of platforms – specifically for high-scale, high-stakes live events such as The Super Bowl and The Oscars. Over the past week, we tackled some of the biggest misconceptions about WebRTC in our social media marketing campaigns. Here’s a full recap of the myths we busted and how Phenix is raising the bar for what is possible for real-time video delivery.
Myth 1: “WebRTC Can’t Scale”
Reality: Phenix WebRTC is built for massive, global scale.
With 34 global Points of Presence, each load-tested to support one million concurrent viewers, Phenix has the ability to deliver fully synchronized streams to mass audiences — all with under ½ second of latency. Phenix’s infrastructure ensures quality, synchronization, and reliability throughout.
Phenix WebRTC isn’t just scalable — it’s engineered to meet the needs of the world’s largest audiences.
If scale has been your blocker, it doesn’t have to be anymore.
➡️ See how Phenix handles global events with ease
Myth 2: “WebRTC Isn’t Reliable for Live Events”
Reality: Phenix is the gold standard for mission-critical live video delivery.
Phenix has delivered flawless real-time streams for some of the world’s biggest events including the Super Bowl, Formula 1, the Oscars, and the Cheltenham horse racing Festival — with millions of dollars on the line.
Our secret?
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Phenix’s zero-ops architecture uses AI to detect and correct faults without requiring human intervention, while its elastic design and patented dynamic scalability algorithms provision resources based on the audience size without requiring significant planning. No more capacity planning, support staff, or uptime monitoring, and zero headaches with Phenix real-time video.
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Phenix ensures an exceptional viewing experience every time with our self-healing high availability architecture with multi-cloud infrastructure and more PoPs (34) than any other WebRTC vendor.
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High-availability delivery with active-active encoding allows content providers to contribute video over multiple network paths into geographically distributed Phenix data centers. Multi-path ingest with global routing across diverse cloud infrastructure ensures complete end-to-end resilience.
When every second is vital, Phenix delivers time and time again.
If layers of reliability are non-negotiable for your business, you're in the right place.
➡️ Explore why top-tier brands trust Phenix
Myth 3: “WebRTC Is Browser-Only and Not Built for Multi-platform Delivery”
Reality: Phenix powers real-time streaming on virtually every device.
Phenix wrote its own WebRTC implementation to support full real-time delivery across platforms — without sacrificing sync or scale. From a single origin stream, Phenix delivers to:
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iOS and Android apps
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Web browsers
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CTV devices like Apple tvOS, Android TV, Smart TVs
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Set-top boxes like Amino
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Social platforms via RTMP restreaming
Phenix also delivers low latency HLS when you need to reach platforms without WebRTC or a native code development environment (we’re talking about you Roku).
Wherever audiences are, Phenix is ready to reach them.
Want to see how Phenix WebRTC redefines what's possible compared to WebRTC solutions of the past?➡️ Explore the key differences
Myth 4: “Scalable WebRTC Is Too Complex to Implement”
Reality: Depending on customer requirements, Phenix can be integrated in less than an hour.
When organizations hear “real-time video streaming,” they often assume complex engineering requirements, long testing cycles, and multi-month integration timelines. This is not the case with Phenix, as customers can deliver enterprise-grade real-time video in production in less than a couple hours depending on customer requirements.
Phenix has clearly outlined the three areas of integration (publishing, authentication, and playback) in our documentation, enabling rapid deployment for our customers who want to hit the ground running. Our infrastructure can scale to millions of viewers with sub-½ second latency in perfect sync — with an integration as simple as embedding a web permalink as an iFrame on your website.
Real-time streaming should be easy. With Phenix, it is.
Take a look inside the Phenix innovation pipeline and see how we make real-time simple.
➡️ Explore how Phenix simplifies streaming
Myth 5: “WebRTC Is Only for Peer-to-Peer Interactions”
Reality: Phenix WebRTC is a real-time infrastructure built for broadcast-scale delivery and interactivity whether supporting one-to-many or many-to-many.
This isn’t video chat technology. Phenix was built to power next-gen interactive experiences like:
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The Cheltenham Festival, with 90% of bookmakers enabling in-race betting and 400K+ viewers per race
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Manheim Auctions, streaming 1,000+ auction channels to 100K+ bidders daily
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LiveMeUp, Shopify’s #1 live shopping app, where real-time interactivity drove a 40% increase in revenue
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Millionaire Live and The Oscars Official Game, where Phenix handled 80K+ joins per second and 1.4M total views.
From trivia to e-commerce, auctions to live entertainment — Phenix delivers synchronized, real-time experiences at global scale.
No matter the use case, Phenix makes real-time possible.
➡️ Learn how Phenix reimagines real-time delivery
Myth 6: “WebRTC Can’t Support SSAI or DRM”
Reality: Phenix delivers real-time SSAI and DRM — without compromise.
Unlike other WebRTC solutions, Phenix WebRTC supports:
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The industry’s first personalized server-side ad insertion (SSAI) stitched in real time at scale, which has integrations with Google Ad Manager (GAM) and SpringServe.
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Digital Rights Management content protection with CastLabs, with no buffering or sync issues. Phenix’s DRM is compatible with FairPlay, PlayReady, and WideVine.
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New monetization models without downgrading the viewer experience.
With Phenix, you can monetize at speed and protect at scale.
Don't choose between monetization and performance—get both
➡️ Learn how Phenix fast tracks revenue and rights protection
The Bottom Line:
While the industry’s expectations around WebRTC are often rooted in early peer-to-peer use cases, Phenix’s purpose-built WebRTC implementation supports broadcast-scale delivery — with sub-½ second latency, patented synchronization, broad device compatibility, and built-in SSAI and DRM. Phenix technology has delivered proven results across the Super Bowl, Cheltenham Festival, global auctions, live trivia, esports, and influencer-driven streaming events that attract tens of millions of viewers. From high-stakes reliability to personalized interactivity, Phenix is delivering what live streaming was always meant to be.
Ready to unlock real-time at scale?
Contact us at info@phenixrts.com or apply for a free trial today!