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In their developer documents, they say they support the following:

• Containers: MP4/CENC, WebM, MPEG-DASH, SmoothStreaming

However, MPEG-DASH and SmoothStreaming are streaming protocols that allow for various containers. The MPEG-DASH spec allows for MPEG2-TS chunks, but I don't see any information regarding supported container formats inside of a DASH manifest.

mpromonet
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nick
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2 Answers2

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I think when it says "MP4/CENC", it is implies it supports MP4 containers within an MPEG-DASH manifest. I don't think TS is supported... so no mention of HLS either of course.

ad rees
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Im am going to guess no. The DASH spec does say it supports TS containers, but I have yet to see an implementation do so. DASH was very much a design-by-commity effort, and they included everything into the spec. In fact they included too much. a subset of DASH called 'DASH 264' seems to be what everyone is gravitating toward. Smooth Streaming and DASH 264 use near identical media formats, but different manifest formats. the file format is basically an MP4 with a fragmented mdat interleaved with a moof (http://alexzambelli.com/blog/2009/02/10/smooth-streaming-architecture/). Google includes WebM because of political reasons (trying to push an alternative codec own and thus keep MPEG-LA honest).

In addition, TS is a patent encumbered format. So by including it google would need to pay royalties to MPEG-LA, and I am assuming they are avoiding that extra cost.

szatmary
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  • Sorry but I didn't award the bounty simply because I was looking for a definitive answer. Whilst your guesses / observations are valid, they didn't definitively provide a yes or no answer. I've done a load of experiments with both MPEG4 and MPEG2 TS using MPEG-DASH and have been unable to get anything to stream in either case and the Google docs are particularly lacking in detail when it comes to which DASH formats are supported. Very frustrating. – Squonk Sep 30 '13 at 19:53
  • I understand. But I don't think a 'definitive answer' even exists without talking to somebody at google directly. The fact that TS does or does not work can be considered a bug, unless the company specifically announces official support. Which they have not. – szatmary Sep 30 '13 at 19:56
  • Agreed. This is, however, the official "community" forum for Chromecast support (using the google-cast tag) and one of the Google Chromecast devs does visit here which is why I was hoping to actually get a definitive answer from him or, at least, somebody who had got it working. I tried 'nudging' the Google dev by posting comments on some posts they'd made here on SO (OK, not approved SO behaviour but no other direct contact appears to be available for Chromecast). I didn't even get a response to my comments never mind a response here. Not encouraging considering I paid money for the device. – Squonk Sep 30 '13 at 20:09