1913403 - 'CBS News Live' streaming video not playing without native HLS support

Status: ASSIGNED

(Core :: Audio/Video, defect, P3)

Description

[YEO HYEON DUG]

Steps to reproduce

1. Go to 'https://www.cbsnews.com/live/'
2. Check if 'CBS News Live' streaming video is playing

Expected behavior

'CBS News Live' streaming video should play normally.

Actual behavior

'CBS News Live' streaming video won't play and the video playback area is black.
(If you refresh the screen, it will play occasionally.)

Device information

• Firefox version: 130.0a1
• Android device model: LG Velvet (Same on other devices)
• Android OS version: S OS (Android 12)

Any additional information?

I am testing in Republic of Korea.

Comment 1

[YEO HYEON DUG]

This is an issue that can be easily identified, but there has been no progress in identifying the issue yet.
Please take a look at this issue and leave a comment.

I am curious whether the streaming video 'CBS News Live' is not playing the same way as in Korea with the Firefox app in the US. I am also curious about the cause and the timing of improvement.

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:tthibaud, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 3

[Titouan Thibaud [:titouan]]

I can reproduce the bug on Firefox Nightly (131.0a1), Android 14, Samsung S24, with no extension enabled.

I cannot reproduce it on Beta (130.0b9) (with the same device).

Moving to Core/ Audio/video.

Comment 4

[John Lin [:jhlin][:jolin]]

CBS News Live serves HLS contents so this is regressed by the HLS disabling experiment. It can be worked around by turning on the 'Desktop site' setting to let hls.js play the video. I could not tell how the site decides whether to use hls.js or not, though.

Marking it as blocking bug 1896931 for CBS seems a major news source in the US.

Comment 5

[John Lin [:jhlin][:jolin]]

Attachment: Bug 1913403 - revert bug 1911651.

While cbsnews.com uses hls.js on desktop, it fails to do so for Fenix.
Since it's a major news source in the US, the impact will be huge.
Reverting the change to not break the site for release.

Comment 6

[John Lin [:jhlin][:jolin]]

Comment on attachment 9422067 [details]
Bug 1913403 - revert bug 1911651.

Beta/Release Uplift Approval Request

• User impact if declined: Fenix users won't be able to watch CBS News Live video.
• Is this code covered by automated tests?: No
• Has the fix been verified in Nightly?: Yes
• Needs manual test from QE?: No
• If yes, steps to reproduce:
• List of other uplifts needed: None
• Risk to taking this patch: Low
• Why is the change risky/not risky? (and alternatives if risky): It reverts a behavior change that breaks HLS playback in Fenix release build.
• String changes made/needed:
• Is Android affected?: Yes

Comment 7

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez (:emilio)]

Seems we should figure out what are they doing to choose hsl.js or not? It might be worth a compat intervention or so if this the only site we know about

Comment 8

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/c15cb2fe71db
revert bug 1911651. r=media-playback-reviewers,padenot

Comment 9

[John Lin [:jhlin][:jolin]]

(In reply to Emilio Cobos Álvarez (:emilio) from comment #7)

Seems we should figure out what are they doing to choose hsl.js or not? It might be worth a compat intervention or so if this the only site we know about

Agree. Leaving this bug open for further investigation.

Comment 10

[tszentpeteri]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/c15cb2fe71db

Comment 11

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

(In reply to Emilio Cobos Álvarez (:emilio) from comment #7)

Seems we should figure out what are they doing to choose hsl.js or not? It might be worth a compat intervention or so if this the only site we know about

Agree with this. Lets not jump to conclusions.

Comment 12

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Sorry, this didn't make it into 131. Technically it's not fixed in 132 since we're keeping the setting in Nightly and early Beta. Not sure what the status flags should be here.
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/c15cb2fe71db

Comment 13

[Dianna Smith [:diannaS]]

Comment on attachment 9422067 [details]
Bug 1913403 - revert bug 1911651.

Approved for 131.0b2

Comment 14

[Pulsebot]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/36e4f14ec557

Comment 16

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is set to S4. However, the following bug duplicate has higher severity:

• Bug 1926307: S3

:jhlin, could you consider increasing the severity of this bug to S3?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 17

[YEO HYEON DUG]

Is this issue really fixed?

==== [ 134.0a1 ] =======================================================================================
I recently downloaded the new source codes and built it to get the 134.0a1 version apk.
I installed this version on my device to check this issue, and the results are as follows:

(desktop site : off) NG !!
'CBS News Live' streaming video won't play and the video playback area is black.

(desktop site : on) NG !!
'CBS News Live' streaming video plays the screen but sound is muted ( ==> no unmute button provided ).
Refer that this issue is the same in Chrome.

This result is almost the same as when this issue was first reported.

=====================================================================================================

==== [ 132.0.2 ] =======================================================================================
I have Firefox 132.0.2 version apk downloaded from the internet.
I installed this version on my device to check this issue, and the results are as follows:

(desktop site : off) OK !!
'CBS News Live' streaming video plays normally
Even if it starts off muted, there is an unmute button so I can hear the sound.

(desktop site : on) NG !!
'CBS News Live' streaming video plays the screen but sound is muted ( ==> no unmute button provided !! ).
Refer that this issue is the same in Chrome.

This issue appears to have been somewhat improved in version 132.0.2.

=====================================================================================================

I wonder why the later 134.0a1 version is more regressive than the earlier 132.0.2.

Comment 18

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] (vacation until Jun 23)]

(In reply to YEO HYEON DUG from comment #17)

Thanks for retesting and for those comprehensive details!

==== [ 132.0.2 ] =======================================================================================
I have Firefox 132.0.2 version apk downloaded from the internet.
(desktop site : off) OK !!
(desktop site : on) NG !!
'CBS News Live' streaming video plays the screen but sound is muted ( ==> no unmute button provided !! ).
Refer that this issue is the same in Chrome.
This issue appears to have been somewhat improved in version 132.0.2.

Well -- if I'm reading you correctly, it sounds like you're seeing consistent results (both good and bad) between Firefox 132.0.2 and Chrome. If so: that's good, from our perspective, in terms of interoperability and browser-bugs. Any issues that you hit in both Firefox and Chrome here (e.g. buttons that you'd like to see) are likely to be site bugs. (In this case, it looks like the site is providing its own media controls, and they appear to have specifically set up their site to only show them when you hover the video with a mouse -- which of course can't happen on Android. So they never end up showing the media controls.)

I wonder why the later 134.0a1 version is more regressive than the earlier 132.0.2.

That's because the about:config pref in question here is turned off in Nightly builds (because it looks like it's something we're trying to turn off in all builds, per bug 1911651).

If you visit about:config in Nightly and type hls into the searchbar, and toggle media.hls.enabled to true, and then reload the page, then you should see this start working. (It does for me, at least.)

Comment 19

[YEO HYEON DUG]

Dear Daniel Holbert,

======================================================================================
For reference, I do not use the nightly version, and I always use only the release version.

If the desktop site value is turned on, it is probably a site issue as you said.
However, if the desktop site value is off, Google is OK, and Firefox is NG !! (It's worse than Chrome.)
This is a Firefox issue, and I'd like you to reproduce and check the contents below again.

[ 134.0a1 ]
(desktop site : off) NG !!
'CBS News Live' streaming video won't play and the video playback area is black.

======================================================================================
My understanding of the HLS patch is as follows.

1. First, Mozilla disabled the HLS library with a patch for Bug 1911651.

2. Next, I registered Bug 1913403 with the content that CBS News Live streaming does not play,
   and Mozilla reverted the patch that disabled the HLS library.

3. So I expected CBS News Live streaming to play normally from now on.

4. In 132.0.2, it played both Desktop Off/On, which met my expectations.

5. However, in 134.0a1, it still did not play in Desktop Off, which was a shock to me.

As you know, the HLS library disable patch in Bug 1911651 seems to have caused the CBS News Live streaming not to play.
Didn't you revert the HLS library disable patch because of this?

If not, does Mozilla plan to apply the HLS library disable patch
even though it still has the CBS News Live streaming not to play issue?

======================================================================================

Comment 20

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] (vacation until Jun 23)]

Sure -- part 2 of your understanding (specifically "Mozilla reverted the patch that disabled the HLS library") is the part that's not-quite-correct -- the patch that landed to fix things here only reenabled the library for release configurations, and it left the library disabled for Nightly (and "early beta" i.e. first half of each beta cycle) configurations.

if you click through to see the code change in comment 8, you can see it has:

 - name: media.hls.enabled
[...]
+  value: @IS_NOT_EARLY_BETA_OR_EARLIER@

The default value of that about:config pref evaluates to true in official release builds (e.g. 132.0.2,), and it evaluates to to false in Nightly-branded builds (e.g. current 134.0a1) -- i.e. turning off the feature. (But importantly, it'll still evaluate to true for v134 release when we release Firefox 134 (and subsequent releases), because that variable is controlled by the build configuration, not by the version number.)

The idea (I think) is that we can leave this feature experimentally disabled, only-in-Nightly-and-early-beta (for now), so that we can watch for other bug reports from Nightly users and find out what other sites (if any) might have the same sort of breakage; and in the meantime, release users won't be subject to any potential breakage.

Comment 21

[YEO HYEON DUG]

Dear Daniel Holbert,

Thank you for the detailed explanation.
Your explanation made me fully understand that there may be differences between Release build and Nightly build.

So I understood that only the release build version applied the Hls option true.

Now I would like to ask about applying the HLS enabling patch in my source code.

My source code is in the state of 130.0a1, so it is HLS Disabled as shown below.

Hls

• name: media.hls.enabled
  type: RelaxedAtomicBool
  value: false
  mirror: always

After changing this code to HLS Enable as below,

Hls

• name: media.hls.enabled
  type: RelaxedAtomicBool
  #if defined(ANDROID)
  value: @IS_NOT_EARLY_BETA_OR_EARLIER@
  #else
  value: false
  #endif
  mirror: always

I generated fenix apk with the command below,
./gradlew app:assembleRelease

However, CBS News Live still does not play.

Did I miss something in the build process when applying this patch to my source?
Will the patch be applied normally if I do mach build again?

Comment 22

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] (vacation until Jun 23)]

You're probably still seeing the value false because local builds are branded as similar-to-nightly (so IS_NOT_EARLY_BETA_OR_EARLIER still gives you a false value as in comment 20).

Your two easiest options to enable the feature in that local build would be:
(1) Just change value: false to value: true in the first snippet that you quoted in comment 21 (no need for the ifdefs or IS_NOT_EARLY_BETA_OR_EARLIER variable).

(2) Or you can just do a build of the unmodified source code, and then after you launch Firefox on your actual phone, visit about:config and search for this media.hls.enabled preference, and toggle its value to true.

Comment 23

[YEO HYEON DUG]

@Daniel Holbert

I used the method (1) you guided.

The following is the reason for the late reply.

I applied (1) to the 130.0a1 full source I have, but the problem did not improve.
Just in case, I applied (1) to the newly received 134.0a1 full source, and finally confirmed that the problem was improved.

Thank you for your guide.

Comment 24

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] (vacation until Jun 23)]

Ok! I don't know enough about this pref to know why it doesn't have the same effect in 130, but maybe some piece wasn't implemented in that release; not sure. In any case, 130 is unsupported now & it's probably best to be on a later release anyway to be up to date on security patches.

Comment 25

[Thomas Wisniewski [:twisniewski]]

I'm unaware of any site-patch we could use here to address this, so I'm removing that keyword for now.