Any way to do a redirect to an .M3U8 playlist?

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Here’s what I’m trying to do:

We deliver a 24/7 streaming feed from a dedicated Wowza server to set-top boxes that we ship to our affiliates. The URL of the HLS stream has to be hard-coded into the set-top box.

So…if for any reason we have to change the URL, we need to either ship the affiliates new boxes with the new URL hard-coded in or we have to ask the affiliate to ship the box back so we can reprogram them.

Would be nice if we could program in a URL to a domain name we own that redirects to the Wowza-generated URL.

Anyone have any ideas?

2

Wouldn’t it be possible with a DNS CNAME, or is it literally the stream name that changes? Maybe put a proxy like Nginx or Varnish in front of your Wowza, and do redirection there …

It’s possible to do it in Wowza, via the StreamNameAlias (see link below), or you can develop your own plug-in that uses the same API calls to redirect internally

https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-get-the-streamnamealias-addon

3

Hi Karel:

Thanks for your prompt reply. I attempted a CNAME record but CPanel won’t allow the special characters that Wowza puts into the stream URL.

I did create an HTML file that just does a redirect to the stream URL and it works GREAT in the browser but doesn’t work in the set-top box.

I’ll check out the StreamNameAlias thing. I hope it doesn’t give me SSL grief.

4

CNAME will only work on domain-name level, so if it’s the Wowza Application name or the Stream Name that changes, then CNAME is useless. But I don’t know of any “special characters” that Wowza puts in the URL …

I didn’t mean a HTML file for redirect. I meant a proxy, like Nginx or Varnish, where you can write proxy rules e.g. based on regexes.

AFAIK, the StreamNameAlias will work with and without SSL.

What kind of change are you speaking of; can you give an example?