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Pros and cons

ExoPlayer has a number of advantages over Android's built in MediaPlayer:

  • Fewer device specific issues and less variation in behavior across different devices and versions of Android.
  • The ability to update the player along with your application. Because ExoPlayer is a library that you include in your application apk, you have control over which version you use and you can easily update to a newer version as part of a regular application update.
  • The ability to [customize and extend the player][] to suit your use case. ExoPlayer is designed specifically with this in mind, and allows many components to be replaced with custom implementations.
  • Support for [playlists][].
  • Support for [DASH][] and [SmoothStreaming][], neither of which are supported by MediaPlayer. Many other formats are also supported. See the [Supported formats page][] for details.
  • Support for advanced [HLS][] features, such as correct handling of #EXT-X-DISCONTINUITY tags.
  • Support for [Widevine common encryption][] on Android 4.4 (API level 19) and higher.
  • The ability to quickly integrate with a number of additional libraries using official extensions. For example the [IMA extension][] makes it easy to monetize your content using the [Interactive Media Ads SDK][].

It's important to note that there are also some disadvantages:

  • For audio only playback on some devices, ExoPlayer may consume significantly more battery than MediaPlayer. See the [Battery consumption page][] for details.
  • Including ExoPlayer in your app adds a few hundred kilobytes to the APK size. This is likely only a concern for extremely lightweight apps. Guidance for shrinking ExoPlayer can be found on the [APK shrinking page][].

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