Output and playback control delivery for adaptive bitrate streaming

A method of customizing an adaptive bitrate streaming session, comprising:

• establishing a network connection session between a client device and a manifest delivery controller;
• receiving a manifest request at said manifest delivery controller from said client device, wherein said manifest request identifies a video;
• determining whether one or more playback control rules and/or output control rules have been set at said manifest delivery controller that apply to said video and/or said client device;
• and
• sending a manifest and control tags from said manifest delivery controller to said client device, wherein the control tags are provided separate from the manifest,
• wherein said manifest identifies locations of a plurality of adaptive bitrate chunks of said video,
• wherein said control tags are associated with the playback control rules and/or output control rules that said manifest delivery controller determined applied to said video and/or said client device, and
• wherein the manifest directly identifies the locations of the adaptive bitrate chunks rather than rely on a link and the control tags directly deliver the playback control rule information rather than rely on a link.