Will the ability to seek in "live broadcast" HLS media return to iOS?

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

Replies

Did you ever get this working? The scrub bar appeared for a little while in iOS 8, but then dissappeared again in iOS 9. Very frsutrating!

Finding exactly the same behaviour you've described to be the case on Desktop Safari as well. Interestingly, Technical Document TN2288 states:


> [...] event playlists are typically used for events such as concerts or sports games where you want to allow the user to seek anywhere in the event from the beginning.


Based on that I'd expect the seek bar to be visible before the EXT-X-ENDLIST tag has been added to the playlist.