HLS Streaming compatibility across mobile browsers
Hi there, I'm looking for JWPlayer mobile browser compatibility report regarding Adaptive HLS delivery. I'm testing with Android Chrome(OS 5.1, chrome v 47.0.x) and most of the devices has playback issue as it just play first chunk and then player paused.
I do see other player i.e. Livestream Player is able to play the same stream but with JWPlayer it paused after first chunk.
Looks like I have figured out the culprit. Its Adaptive Bitrate streaming that wasn't accepted well in all mobile device browser and hence player paused while adapting bitrate profile and getting stuck. I have moved to single-bitrate stream and now I can see it working on almost devices.
Still, I want to know from JWPlayer support, if there is such limitation because I haven't came across it in any documentation.
HLS is an adaptive format on mobile as well, so it should definitely be able to handle HLS manifests with multiple qualities. Can you please give me a link to a page where you have the affected player installed?
Hi Alex, This is Vineet from same team. We have tested across 50 devices to conclude the fact that ABR streaming causes player to pause after playing initial chunk whereas Single Bitrate stream plays fine. It includes iPhone4S and various Android devices having chrome browsers.
Thank you for those links. It looks like the issue lies with the multi-bitrate stream itself. When our player is in full screen on iOS, it is no longer our player that is handling the playback, but it is Apple’s built-in media player in iOS. On an iPhone, all videos are forced to be in full-screen. I found that playing your stream on an iPad works fine when viewing the video inline on the page, but once I force it into fullscreen, which again hands over the playback to iOS, it hangs after the next chunklist. I also confirmed this by directly accessing the URL for your stream in Safari on iOS, and the same issue happens.
I ran the stream through Apple’s mediastreamvalidator tool and it looks like it reported multiple errors, some are serious and are listed as “MUST Fix Issues”. You can find the output from the validator linked below.