Previous versions of the video player (launched through iOS Safari) allowed users to seek in HLS media (e.g. audio and video m3u8's) without restriction. e.g. Loading an HLS video URL in iOS 7 Safari would start playback from the current "live" position but included the usual seek / scrubber bar where users could go back to the beginning of the broadcast or jump to any intermediate point they wanted.
http://i.imgur.com/tI6F1Wz.png
During the live broadcast (and playback from an earlier point) the progress bar would continually update with the most recent content length available for the stream.
Unfortunately, ever since iOS 8, it no longer seems to be possible to seek backward in an HLS stream. Instead of the seek / scrub bar, the video player shows the words "Live Broadcast" in its place.
http://i.imgur.com/Kj23OXd.png
You can still perform a 30 second rewind, but there is no way to navigate to the beginning of the media. Once the video stream ends and the server adds a #EXT-X-ENDLIST flag to the end of the list, the scrub bar appears. But during the live broadcast there doesn't appear to be any way to seek the media.
Is this a bug in the iOS 8 video player? Is there a new required flag for HLS streams to allow seeking during live broadcast? Is there any known workaround?
Thanks,
Brian Ecker