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scyber
Visitor

Is HLS broken on Roku 2?

Anyone having any success playing hls streams on Roku 2? I noticed that a few of my channels weren't working, so I tried loading up the simplevideoplayer from the 3.0 SDK and used Apples bit bop hls stream and I get the same error:

play failed: An unexpected problem (but not server timeout or HTTP error) has been detected.


Is there something that needs to be changed in Brightscript in order to play hls streams on the roku2?
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42 REPLIES 42
jwray
Visitor

Re: Is HLS broken on Roku 2?

Hi,

I'd be interested in an answer to this question also. I'm the author of the Plex channel that uses HLS to stream local media to the Roku. The channel works fine under the old hardware with both 2.x and 3.0 firmware but a number of users are reporting that the Roku2 does not work. It appears to reject the stream immediately on reading the m3u8 file and never requests a ts segment file.

A couple of users have also mentioned that other channels they use also do not work on the Roku2 but didn't specify which.

Any suggestions would be gratefully received here,
thanks,
Jonny
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Anonymous
Visitor

Re: Is HLS broken on Roku 2?

HLS isn't broken, though there may be a few outstanding corner cases. We are furiously working to address them. If you want to send me sample links, we can take a look.
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jwray
Visitor

Re: Is HLS broken on Roku 2?

The Plex app is designed to stream local media so sample links are inherently local also. Let me talk to the core Plex devs and see if they have a remotely accessible server you can access.

thanks for the help,
Jonny

"RokuPatrick" wrote:
HLS isn't broken, though there may be a few outstanding corner cases. We are furiously working to address them. If you want to send me sample links, we can take a look.
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scyber
Visitor

Re: Is HLS broken on Roku 2?

From the 3.0 SDK examples (simplevideoplayer):

http://devimages.apple.com/iphone/sampl ... opall.m3u8

Does not work on my Roku2. I was unable to test the big buck bunny url in the sample since that url appears to be dead.
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scyber
Visitor

Re: Is HLS broken on Roku 2?

"scyber" wrote:
From the 3.0 SDK examples (simplevideoplayer):

http://devimages.apple.com/iphone/sampl ... opall.m3u8

Does not work on my Roku2. I was unable to test the big buck bunny url in the sample since that url appears to be dead.


FYI, I just tried a direct m3u8 url:
http://devimages.apple.com/iphone/sampl ... index.m3u8

and it appears to work fine. So perhaps the issue is with m3u8 files that contain references to other m3u8 files?
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SolveLLC
Visitor

Re: Is HLS broken on Roku 2?

We're seeing issues as well. Stream will load, play a segment and rebuffer.

Edit: we don't know if this is specific to "Roku 2" or if its specific to the firmware. We've submitted sample streams to Kevin that were generated by a major commercial encoder vendor that clearly work with 2.9 but do not work with "3.0". We've received no feedback other than "it's a regression bug".
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jbrave
Channel Surfer

Re: Is HLS broken on Roku 2?

The Roku2 will however, play HLS streams that the previous Roku's won't play, for instance with an MP3 audio track instead of AAC.
Screenshades: The first Screensaver for Roku2!
Musiclouds: The best free internet music, on your Roku!
Ouroborialis: Psychedelic Screensaver for Roku!
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jwray
Visitor

Re: Is HLS broken on Roku 2?

To address the Roku2 vs firmware 3.0 thing a little. In my case v3.0 works fine, in fact playing streams that 2.9 would fail on over wifi (but not wired).

Jonny
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SolveLLC
Visitor

Re: Is HLS broken on Roku 2?

"jbrave" wrote:
The Roku2 will however, play HLS streams that the previous Roku's won't play, for instance with an MP3 audio track instead of AAC.



So who's doing the Veetle channel then?
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