[LINK] Video streaming

[David]

On Tuesday I received an off-Link response from Irene Graham as she was unable to post directly to Link.  Irene identified a likely problem with SBS On-Demand, and her first email is copied below to set the context.  I'll follow that with an edited version of my last response.

DavidL.

---------- Forwarded Message ----------
From: rene <rene.ln at libertus.net>
To: <link at mailman.anu.edu.au>
Sent: Sat, 3 Feb 2018 16:54:04 +1000
Subject: Re: [LINK] Video streaming

On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 14:47:34 +1100, David wrote:

> Once upon a time I could happily play ABC iView and SBS on-demand videos.  But now I have the latest Linux, Firefox & Videolan packages with H.264 support, and Flash, and nothing much works at all.

I'm not an expert in those sort of issues, but based on my recent investigations into video playing, using (un-common) Windows browsers such as Palemoon and Vivaldi (because I prefer to avoid Firefox and Chrome)...

In relatively recent times, some sites have started using "HLS adaptive streaming" which has content types: application/vnd.apple.mpegurl (.M3U8) and video/MP2T (.ts):

    * I'm fairly sure that a browser, or whatever, having "H.264 support" does not necessarily mean that it can play videos sent via "HLS adaptive streaming", but I've not been able to find out what other "support" is needed. (I think, but am far from sure, that it's something to do with codecs). 
 
    * Sites using "HLS adaptive streaming" include-SBS on-demand, and Fairfax (via its use of the Brightcove player, and/or JW Player)
https://support.brightcove.com/delivering-hls-video
https://support.jwplayer.com/customer/portal/articles/1430240

Sites using "HLS adaptive streaming" as first priority such as SBS seem to say on help pages that they'll fall back to Flash if the browser/etc doesn't support it, but my efforts to force fallback to Flash tend to suggest many "help" pages are probably out of date, i.e. they don't fallback. My suspicion is they might fallback if the browser indicates no support at all for "HTML5 video" playing, but if a browser indicates even "partial" support, no fallback, and by now most browsers probably report at least partial suppport.
 
> SBS on-demand doesn't work at all, but I don't think it uses Flash (?).  The Firefox browser console displays a mass of diagnostics beginning with "Error: window.SBS.ensighten is undefined".
 
"ensighten" imo strongly suggests advert and/or tracker service supplier, see:
https://www.ensighten.com/
 
For initial trouble shooting purposes, if not already done, I suggest try viewing videos on SBS with all ad blockers and/or script blockers completely turned off. A couple of months ago SBS were definitely sending adverts at the beginning of a video (whether news items, or on-demand content) and nothing would play if advert blocked. However, today, it seems to me they're not sending adverts (but maybe my eventual browser setup has outfoxed them). If they are sending adverts, it's very likely the advert at the start of an item will run fine (because it's likely from YouTube with a content type that is *not* "video/MP2T" i.e. is *not* HLS Adaptive Streaming), but then when SBS's own content/video starts, it probably will be "video/MP2T" and won't play, or the audio or image will be distorted.
 
BTW, arguably interestingly, it seems that Netflix, Stan and Foxtel-Now (all of which I've trialled recently) do not use the "HLS adaptive streaming" method. Yet Netflix and Stan are nevertheless capable of allowing the client to select preferred data download usage rate from 2 or 3 options).  They just work fine (as does Foxtel-Now if one one spoofs user-agent string to equal Chrome), even using an un-common Windows browser. 
 
Since they're pay-to-view services, that leads me to suspect that problems trying to to view SBS and Fairfax *might* perhaps have more to do with blocking advert and tracking services than anything else.
 
One other possible issue is that if the site is sending "protected content", then the browser/whatever likely needs to have the "Widevine Content Decryption" Module, or similar, installed. 
 
Irene

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