Why are video players so big? A trip down the rabbit hole of video playback engines

Video players are large due to the complexity of their underlying technology. They consist of two main components: chrome (user interface elements and controls) and a playback engine, which is responsible for handling various tasks such as adaptive bitrate streaming, media containers and codecs, subtitles, DRM & encrypted media, and more. Playback engines like hls.js are Swiss Army knives that support numerous features and edge cases, making them versatile but large in size. While some companies may have smaller playback engines tailored to their specific use case, for most developers, the trade-off of using a larger video player with extensive functionality is worth it.

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