I'm currently writing a feasibility study where one of many questions to answer regards how to create an Android app that plays audio retrieved by progressive download.
The company I'm working for hosts loads of audio files in the form of talk radio, both in MP3 and M4A (AAC) formats. We've hired external developers to create an app and they now claim they aren't able to perform progressive download of the M4A files and play them back in MediaPlayer. I.e. this is a standard HTTP file download from an IIS server where you are able to start playback of the audio file before it has been fully downloaded. The developers claim that it might help to change the M4A encoding to something called ADTS. MP3s apparently works fine though. I have no reason to distrust the developers of course, but I would like a second opinion, especially since my own research has rendered no coherent results. When I've researched the topic I can't find anything indicating that M4A files cannot be progressively downloaded and played back on Android MediaPlayer before they are fully downloaded. I do realize there are plenty of differences between API versons, and that support may be difficult on some earlier devices, but surely this must be documented somewhere if that were the case? Someone would surely have the same problem if this is indeed a problem, right? I've also tried other third party players on Android Market and successfully played back files in a progressive manner. What gives? What's their secret? It all comes down to this: Due to lots of legacy code and a very bureaucratic change management routine it will be a lengthy and costly process for us to switch formats, so this is not a decision we can take lightly. Can someone please confirm that most of the Android versions (let's say 2.1 to 4.1) cannot successfully play back progressively downloaded M4A files with MediaPlayer before they are fully downloaded? If so, what is the actual issue, and can it be solved by simply changing formats? Thanks in advance. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
