HLS with AES 128 encryption on Android (Ice Cream Sandwich)

Question

I am starting to put an App together that will require the use of HLS video. I want to use Ice Cream sandwich as the target SDK, but I am not certain if this api will support H

Answer 1

In general ICS does support AES-128 encryption according to the HLS standard (see here). However, the media-playback capabilities of a device not dependent on the Android version, but on the media-framework implemented on the particular device. Most phones and tablet use the stagefright media-framework, introduced in Android 2.2. So far I have not seen or heard of any ICS using stagefright where encrypted HLS did not work. However I have, tried seen ICS Set-Top-Boxes using other media-frameworks not capable of playing encrypted HLS (new firmware will probably fix this).

To sum up: understanding is that all ICS are intended to support encrypted HLS, if a particular device is not, a fix is probably on the way. The reason is that without flash, encrypted HLS is the only possible way of achieving DRM for live streaming.