The new streaming method has broken streaming
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The recent update to the iOS app announced a whole new approach to streaming, and… now streaming basically doesn’t work.
Every time I try to listen to an episode via streaming rather than a download, the audio will pause every few seconds. After a couple of seconds it begins again, slightly rewound, advances another few seconds, pauses again, and so on (well, not for very long because I quickly give up).
Interestingly, if I go to download the episode in this situation, the download is essentially instantaneous when it used to take at least a few seconds for the download to complete. But I much preferred the old system where listening to an episode without downloading was feasible. I do automatically download a lot of the podcasts I’m subscribed to, but now for anything NOT in this category, I have to go manually download an episode in order to listen to it.
I’m not sure why you’ve gone with a new approach for streaming, but for me the old approach was working perfectly. I’d quite like it back. -
Regarding this issue, are you playing it over your phone directly or using Airplay? Does the problem only happen with specific podcasts?
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It doesn’t matter whether I am using my phone directly or using Airplay. And it happens with every podcast episode where I am attempting to stream rather than using a download. As I said, there are plenty of podcasts where I’ve downloaded episodes well ahead of time.
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I note that there’s another thread where people are complaining about problems with AirPlay. But in fact I don’t think this has anything to do with AirPlay specifically. It’s just that people don’t often listen to the audio directly from their phone. The issue is streaming TO the phone, not the streaming FROM the phone.
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We are currently having an issue with Airplay where playback stutters.
However, streaming on your device directly should not be affected. To check if there’s a possibility with network issues, could you try using mobile data or VPNs to check if there is something in your network that might be causing the stream issues?
You’ve mentioned that downloads are smooth and network issues are unlikely. However, we cannot reproduce the problem from standard streaming.
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Given that I have the exact same symptoms as everyone on the Airplay thread, I’m pretty confident it’s the exact same issue.
I will attempt to verify again that it occurs without Airplay. But to me there’s no logical reason why an issue with Airplay would cause the app to display the pause symbol. If the issue was purely with Airplay, wouldn’t the app keep acting as if it was playing, even though the sound cut out? -
Can confirm that it occurred with mobile data, on my phone, though it was less significant.
I would note that what’s changed is not my network. It is your streaming methodology. You literally stated this in the release notes. I updated the app. This problem immediately started happening. Occam’s Razor links the 2 events. -
Also I’m not clear on why you would think that an Airplay issue would only affect streamed episodes, and not downloaded episodes. The difference between the two is not at the Airplay step.
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Hi @trevormobbs,
A temporary fix has already been implemented on the server-side, so AirPlay should be working properly now.
We’re also working on a permanent solution as part of a future update (version 7.77) which you can track on our GitHub repository here: https://github.com/Automattic/pocket-casts-ios/pull/2464
Pocket Casts Forum 