Cue is the live streaming engine we write ourselves and install on your dedicated server. It is a media server that answers the way Wowza does — the same RTMP sign-in on port 1935, the same playlist.m3u8 paths, the same REST API that MediaCP drives — and the way Flussonic does for the channels you bring over from it. Moving to it is an import and a switch you can undo, not a rebuild of everything that points at your server.
Everything that talks to a streaming server was set up against Wowza’s or Flussonic’s conventions. Cue answers those conventions instead of asking you to change them, so the move happens on the server and nowhere else.
| What you have today | What Cue answers with |
|---|---|
Encoders publishing to rtmp://host:1935/app with an Adobe user and password |
The same port, application names and challenge, per application; a password carried in the stream key works too, for encoders that only have a key field |
Players and embeds loading /app/stream/playlist.m3u8, with or without _definst_ |
The same paths, with RTMP and HTTP sharing port 1935 as before |
| MediaCP, or any tool written for Wowza’s REST API on 8087 | Wowza’s /v2/servers/_defaultServer_/… calls and the 8086 counters, with the panel’s own credentials; the panel creates applications, sets their passwords and sees them live |
| A website that signs links with Wowza SecureToken v2 or Flussonic securelink | Both formulas accepted with the secret you already use; Cue’s own HMAC links besides |
Middleware answering Flussonic’s on_play and on_publish |
Asked the same way, with X-AuthDuration, X-UserId and X-Max-Sessions honoured, for every protocol |
A receiver for Flussonic’s event_sink |
The same envelope and X-Signature, per application, buffered and sent again while the receiver is down |
Flussonic channels published at rtmp://host/static and played at /name/index.m3u8 |
A channel imported from Flussonic answers those addresses too |
Rewind links: Wowza’s ?DVR, Flussonic’s index-… and timeshift_… |
Served from the broadcast’s own recording, at the same addresses |
Every input can feed every output: a stream published once over SRT plays as HLS, DASH, WebRTC, RTMP and RTSP at the same moment, and a multicast feed from a head-end comes out as HLS for browsers.
:1935publish; Adobe sign-in or a password in the stream key; RTMPS on the TLS port:9998/udppublish; the stream ID names application, stream, user and password; AES keyed by the publishing password/app/stream/whippublish with the publishing password as the bearer token; all media on 8189, UDP or TCP:554publish over TCP with Basic sign-in or ?password=rtsp://IP cameras, with the camera’s own loginsrt://Cue calls the sender; encrypted feeds tooudp:// · tshttp://unicast, multicast on a named interface (bare or RTP-wrapped), or over HTTPhls://re-serve another origin, CDN-fronted ones includedrtmp://mirror another server, with its sign-in/app/stream/playlist.m3u8MPEG-TS or fMP4/CMAF segments; Low-Latency HLS over HTTP/2manifest.mpd · index.mpdbuilt on the same CMAF segments as fMP4 HLS/app/stream/whepunder a second behind live; AAC sound is turned into Opus while WebRTC viewers watch:1935play, with a picture cache for a fast startm=requestany stream as MPEG-TS on the SRT port:554TCP interleaved; players that ask for UDP retry over TCP/app/stream/mpegtsover HTTP, or pushed to a UDP multicast groupthumbnail.jpgthe latest frame of every live stream, refreshed every 5 sOpen a group for the detail. Everything listed here is built and has passed its acceptance test; what is not there yet is named further down, not left for you to discover.
?DVR and Flussonic’s index-<from>-<s|now>, timeshift_rel and timeshift_abs addresses.CUE-OUT/CUE-IN, EXT-X-DATERANGE, both, or off, per application, in the source and every rendition.event_sink shape: streams and sources opening and closing, refused publishes, recordings starting and finishing. Signed, up to five receivers per application, kept and sent again until each answers.A row appears here only when Cue does it today. The other two columns come from each vendor’s own documentation for Wowza Streaming Engine 4.11.3 and Flussonic Media Server 26.09, read in September 2026; a dash means the product does not set out to do that.
| Capability | Wowza 4.11 | Flussonic 26.09 | Cue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Getting video in | |||
| RTMP and RTMPS publishing, a password per application | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SRT publishing, encrypted, and SRT pull | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| WebRTC publishing (WHIP) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| RTSP publishing and IP-camera pull | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| MPEG-TS over UDP, multicast included | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Relaying another server over HLS or RTMP | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Backup sources, switched automatically | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Getting video out | |||
| HLS in MPEG-TS, fMP4/CMAF and Low-Latency HLS | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| WebRTC playback (WHEP), under a second behind live | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| MPEG-DASH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| RTMP, SRT, RTSP and MPEG-TS playback | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Several audio languages, switched by the viewer | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| A viewer cap per application | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Working on the stream | |||
| Adaptive-bitrate ladder Wowza: MainConcept or NVENC · Flussonic: CPU, NVENC or Quick Sync · Cue: Quick Sync or CPU | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| A logo on the picture | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Thumbnails of live streams | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| DVR rewind and time-shift | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| MP4 clips and exports | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SCTE-35 in, ad markers in HLS | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Access and events | |||
| Signed playback links | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Asking your own backend who may watch or publish | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Address and site restrictions Cue: countries through the Cue Reseller Panel | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| HTTPS with a certificate for the server’s name Cue: a free Let’s Encrypt certificate, switched on in the interface | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Webhooks | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Moving between them | |||
| Wowza’s playback paths and publishing sign-in | Native | — not applicable | Yes |
| Wowza’s REST API, as MediaCP calls it | Native | — not applicable | Yes |
| Flussonic’s addresses, for imported channels | — not applicable | Native | Yes |
| Importing a Wowza or Flussonic server, passwords included | — not applicable | — not applicable | Yes |
| Installing beside the old engine, switching and switching back | — not applicable | — not applicable | Yes |
DRM with Widevine, FairPlay or PlayReady; closed captions (CEA-608/708, WebVTT); AES-128 encrypted HLS; server-side ad insertion; encoding on NVIDIA cards. If one of those carries your service, a Wowza server or a Flussonic server is the straight answer for now.
Nothing is removed and nothing is final until you say so. The old engine keeps serving while Cue is tried beside it, and the switch goes both ways.
On a server already running Wowza or Flussonic, Cue takes 1936 for publishing and 8443 for its interface, checks every port it needs first, and installs no firewall of its own. Your live traffic is untouched.
The Import page reads the old installation on the same machine — every Application.xml, the publishing password files, PushPublishMap.txt and the .stream files, or a flussonic.conf — or a .tgz you upload. It shows the plan without a single secret, and creates the applications you tick with their names, publishing users and passwords, viewer caps, sources, DVR windows and SecureToken secrets as they were. A Wowza or Flussonic transcoder becomes Cue’s HD ladder, and the plan tells you so.
Point one encoder at 1936 with its original password and play the result. Everything else is still on the old engine.
Switch to Cue in the interface stops and disables the old engine and hands 1935 (and 80/443 when free) to Cue, rolling back by itself if Cue does not answer. Switch back returns the ports and starts the old engine again. The old engine is stopped, never deleted.
Cue is its own line on the invoice, beside the server and never folded into it. The figures come from the same catalogue the checkout bills from. It is billed at its monthly price on every cycle: a longer term lowers the server’s lines, not Cue’s.
| Cue Media Server, per month | $195 |
|---|---|
| Setup, once | $29.99 |
| Licensed to | One machine, bound when it first activates |
| On a 3, 6 or 12-month term | $195 × the months: software takes no term discount |
| The line it was built on | HPE ProLiant m710x, from $62.58/mo as Intel Xeon E3-1585L v5 Quad Core 3.00 Ghz · 32 GB DDR4 · 1 × NVMe-SSD 240 GB · 1 Gbps |
| Together, from | $257.58/mo before tax |
| Cities | New York, Bucharest, San Francisco, Amsterdam and Miami |
The button opens the m710x configurator with Cue Media Server already under Software. The other lines that sell it are listed below; on any of them it sits under Software → Streaming solutions once a Linux system is chosen: Ubuntu 22.04 or later, Debian 12 or later, AlmaLinux 9 or later, Rocky Linux 9 or later. Cue has no ARM build, so our ARM machines do not offer it.
Once the operating system is on — for a ready server, at handover — we run Cue’s signed installer with a license key issued for that machine. The key binds to the machine the first time it activates.
The interface answers on port 8443 of your server, and the server’s page in your dashboard shows the license and its state. You are root on the machine, so cue admin reset-password <name> sets a new interface password whenever you need one.
A control panel for selling streaming, built into Cue and laid out the way MediaCP is, where your own customers sign in to their live, on-demand, TV and radio services. It is licensed per machine, like the engine.
| Cue Reseller Panel, per month | $49 |
|---|---|
| With Cue Media Server | $244/mo ($195 + $49), $29.99 setup once for the two |
For what a Wowza server is usually asked to do — RTMP in with Adobe sign-in, HLS out at the same addresses, MediaCP managing it through the REST API — yes: encoders, embeds and the panel keep their settings. Wowza’s advanced properties, SMIL files and a panel’s own transcoder profiles are not carried over; an application with a Wowza transcoder gets Cue’s HD ladder instead.
Ubuntu 22.04 or later, Debian 12 or later, AlmaLinux 9 or later and Rocky Linux 9 or later. The installer verifies our signed release with OpenSSL 3, which older systems do not have, so the option on anything else is handed to our staff rather than installed. Cue does not run on Windows.
The key binds to the machine it first activates on; a reinstall of that machine keeps it. Cue then holds a signed license valid for seven days and renews it every twelve hours, so an outage on our side never stops your streams early. Without a valid license — the account closed, or the key copied to another machine — Cue stops publishing and playing, and the interface stays up to take a key.
No. Software on our servers is billed at its monthly price times the months on every cycle; the longer-term discount applies to the server’s own lines.
Every release is signed with our release key, and the server checks each file against that signature before it runs the release’s installer. The interface tells you when a new version is out and installs it when you press Install; a release altered after signing is refused.
Yes. Beside a running Wowza or Flussonic, Cue installs on side ports and touches no firewall; you move the ports over with Switch to Cue once you are satisfied, and Switch back undoes it.