Wowza Community

HLS via html5 video won't play on t-mobile iPhone unless on wifi

This is a weird problem. My app uses the html5 video tag to play hls live streams.

My code is (approximately):

<video controls playsinline id='theID' poster=''>
<source src='http://123.45.67.890:1935/streamName.stream/playlist.m3u8'>
</video>

This works perfectly on Android (all carriers) and iOS (all carriers) when on WiFi. It also works in almost all cases when the user is on cellular data.

I have discovered (3-4 users notified) that the video will not load/play for t-Mobile users who are on cellular data. If they connect to WiFi, it works, but if they disconnect it does not.

Has anyone experienced this?

My stream is brought in from source as rtsp with h.264 video and aac audio. Would transcoding make a difference? Is there some additional html meta tag I should add? I have two ideas as to the possible cause; 1) I’m leaving out some code/setting/specification and most carriers accept the code, assuming the implied value for the missing code, or 2.) T-mobile has some specific restrictions to streaming content which have to be worked around somehow.

Your input is greatly appreciated!

Interesting @Justin Moss…well if it is HLS playback, we do support it on iOS devices indeed. I would suggest opening a support ticket, we’ll run a diagnostic on in that specific scenario.

I would love to hear the answer to this one. Is it related to needing an audio-only stream available, as in this link?

https://www.wowza.com/docs/How-to-create-Apple-App-Store-compliant-streams

Hi @David Wilkins, unfortunately, we cannot provide a solution without running tests on the code to find the problem and a support ticket was never submitted by the original poster.

@Justin Moss do you have an update that you can share?

Hi @David Wilkins, this is actually a video only stream. My audio is a dummy stream which is probably not able to be played, but there is something I suspect on the t Mobile side, as one of our users who reported the issue also cannot play other web-hosted videos.