HLS RADIO PLAYER PLUGIN

What does HLS stand for?

HTTP Live Streaming (also known as HLS) is an HTTP-based communication protocol for adaptive bitrate streaming developed by Apple Inc. and released in 2009. The protocol is supported by many media players, web browsers, mobile devices and streaming media servers. As of 2019, it is the most popular streaming format, according to an annual video industry survey. HLS is similar to MPEG-DASH in that it splits the entire stream into a sequence of small HTTP-based file downloads, with each download representing a short piece of a potentially unlimited total transport stream. A list of available streams, encoded at different bit rates, is sent to the client using an enhanced M3U playlist. HTTP Live Streaming is based on standard HTTP transactions and, unlike UDP-based protocols such as RTP, can overcome any firewall or proxy server that allows standard HTTP traffic through. This means that content can also be offered by conventional HTTP servers and delivered over widespread HTTP-based content delivery networks. The standard also includes a standard encryption mechanism and secure key distribution over HTTPS, which together provide a simple DRM system. Later versions of the protocol also allow fast forward and rewind in trick mode and subtitle integration. Apple has documented HTTP Live Streaming as an Internet Draft (Individual Submission), the first stage in the process of publication as a Request for Comments (RFC). Since December 2015, the authors of this document have asked the RFC Independent Stream Editor (ISE) to publish the document as an informative (non-standard) RFC outside of the IETF consensus process. In August 2017, RFC 8216 was published to describe version 7 of the protocol.