Summary
Google Chrome is making changes to behavior in the Encrypted Media Extension (EME)
implementation in Chrome browser to be more compliant with the spec. These changes
are scheduled for Chrome 58 (release date in Apr 2017).
This document discusses details of these changes and steps required for any content
provider or HTML5 player developer/manager to stay current and avoid any service
interruption.
Additionally, some best practices are outlined for to ensure web video application
compatibility across different browsers and platforms.
Upcoming Changes
Codecs
Codecs will be mandatory in Chrome 58 and above. Currently the Chrome browser does
not care if this value is not set.
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-dev/aG_QGiPErlE
What does the spec say?
(http://w3c.github.io/encrypted-media/#idl-def-mediakeysystemmediacapability)
The codecs parameter, which is required by most MIME types in order to determine the
code, is usually necessary to specify exactly how the resource is encoded.
What will Chrome do starting from Chrome 58?
Chrome will consider MIME types without codecs specified as unsupported. They
will be ignored when considering if Widevine supports the specified configuration or not.
If none of the remaining MIME types is supported, playback will fail.
What should applications do?
Please specify the exact codec used by the encrypted content! That way if Chrome (or a
particular version of Chrome) doesn’t support it, the application will know before it starts
to play and can potentially select an alternative.
Examples
The following is currently supported in Chrome, but will fail starting in Chrome 58.
var widevineOptions = [
{
initDataTypes: [ 'cenc' ],
