Streaming HLS to iOS devices using Windows Azure Media Services

Question

I have been doing some exploring of Azure Media Services, specifically with media converted to HLS. I walked through the process of creating HLS content using a process similar to the one outlined in this HLS Walkthrough

Now that I have my HLS content in Azure, I am hoping to stream it just as you would any m3u8 stream. I have tried the following:

• WebView in iPad – works OK, it's jumping and not very smooth
  
• Safari on OS X – does not work at all
  
• VLC Player – does not work at all.
  

Granted this i not exhaustive nor thorough (yet) but before I continue I wanted to get feedback if anyone has any. I stumbled along WAMS Media Player for iOS regarding the Smooth Player for iOS. Is the expectation here that the Smooth Player developed for iOS is the best way to consume HLS generated media from WAMS?

Answer 1

As I understand it, Safari's support (or lack thereof) for HLS depends on QuickTime -- there are versions of QuickTime that do support HLS (QuickTime Pro), but by default, the support is not there.

I suggest you transcode to both Smooth Streaming and HLS. Serve Smooth Streaming via Flash or Silverlight to Windows/Mac clients and HLS via HTML5 to iOS clients.