[playback] Add HLS support and stop blaming stale MediaErrors

bitvid attached every hosted source with `videoEl.src = url`, which only plays
HLS on Safari-family browsers. Firefox 146 fails with MEDIA_ERR_SRC_NOT_SUPPORTED
(canPlayType returns ""), so every .m3u8 note -- e.g. anything published by
nostube/slidestr -- was unplayable there and the URL-health badge showed
"offline". Chrome/Brave 149 happen to play HLS natively, which is why this
looked browser-specific.

Vendor hls.js (npm run build:hls) and route HLS sources through it:

- js/services/hlsPlayback.js owns detection, engine choice and the hls.js
  lifecycle. Engine choice keys off MediaSource, NOT canPlayType: Chrome
  returns "maybe" for every HLS type, so a native-first branch would hang.
  Native is used only when MSE is genuinely unavailable.
- The bundle is the FULL build, not hls.js/light -- light drops the alternate
  audio stream controller and real ladders demux audio into an EXT-X-MEDIA
  group. It is lazy-imported only when a .m3u8 is encountered, so ordinary
  MP4/WebTorrent playback never pays the ~500KB.
- modalCoordinator tears the instance down first; clearing `src` alone leaves
  the transmuxing worker and segment fetches running after the modal closes.
- urlHealthController probes HLS by fetching the playlist for #EXTM3U. The old
  bare-<video> probe could not load it and on Chrome emitted no events at all,
  burning the full timeout on every HLS card.
- HLS_PLAYBACK_START_TIMEOUT widens the 3s start window, which fired
  mid-startup: the bundle, master playlist, variant playlist, init segment and
  first media segment are four-plus serial round trips.

Also fixes two bugs found while verifying this:

- A stale MediaError was reported as the current failure. Teardown clears `src`
  and calls load(), leaving MEDIA_ERR_SRC_NOT_SUPPORTED ("Empty src attribute")
  on the element; a later watchdog fallback rendered that as "Hosted playback
  failed: source not supported or blocked." over a stream that was playing
  fine. Only a MediaError produced by the current attempt is surfaced now.
  Sources are also bound before the watchdogs are armed, so hls.js's own
  attachMedia() src swap cannot read as a playback failure.
- `audio/x-mpegurl` is a legacy alias for an HLS playlist of any kind, not an
  audio-only assertion. isAudioOnlyVideoObject misfiled HLS video ladders
  published with it as podcasts and dropped them from every video feed.

Verified end-to-end in Chromium, Chrome 149, Brave 149 and Firefox 146 against
a live HLS stream: Firefox goes from "No playable source found." to playing.
Rollback: stop calling attachHlsSource() and the previous `src` assignment
returns; see docs/playback-fallback.md.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
This commit is contained in:
thePR0M3TH3ANandClaude Opus 5 committed 2026-07-28 13:58:55 -04:00
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@@ -17,6 +17,7 @@
"build:beacon": "npm run build:beacon:bundle && npm run lint:inline-styles",
"build:bitcoin-connect": "node scripts/build-bitcoin-connect.mjs",
"build:blossom-sdk": "node scripts/build-blossom-sdk.mjs",
"build:hls": "node scripts/build-hls.mjs",
"ci:beacon": "npm run build:beacon",
"format": "prettier --cache --write css/tailwind.source.css css/tokens.css css/docs.css \"docs/**/*.html\" tailwind.config.cjs README.md CONTRIBUTING.md",
"audit": "node scripts/daily-design-system-audit.mjs",
@@ -65,6 +66,7 @@
"blossom-client-sdk": "5.0.0",
"cssnano": "^7.1.2",
"fake-indexeddb": "^6.2.5",
"hls.js": "^1.6.16",
"jsdom": "^28.1.0",
"nostr-wasm": "^0.1.0",
"pixelmatch": "^5.3.0",