We have been successfully streaming our H.264 .MP4 programming via HLS from our CDN since 2019.
As of recently, however, we are getting complaints from users with older Roku players (Roku 3, etc.) that certain of our programming starts to stream inititially, but then cuts off after about 10 seconds, indicating the program is "temporarily unavailable."
We have checked all systems and specs and everything is working as it should. Later model Roku players stream our programs flawlessly just as they have been since 2019.
Our CDN has not changed anything and we haven't either. The only difference between programs that stream correctly now and those that do not is the working videos were encoded Constant Bit Rate (10Mpbs) and the videos which do not stream correctly were encoded Variable Bit Rate (constrained 10Mbps). This only occurs with HLS or DASH. Straight MP4 files stream without incident.
Did Roku change something on their end which would affect HLS or DASH or otherwise cause this problem? A firmware update on older players maybe? Any clues to help us sort out this problem would be appreciated. Thank you.
Veteran Publisher
