What is HLS?

HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) is an HTTP-based adaptive bitrate streaming communications protocol implemented by Apple Inc. as part of its QuickTime, Safari, OS X, and iOS software. It works by breaking the overall stream into a sequence of small HTTP-based file downloads, each downloading one short chunk of an overall potentially unbounded transport stream. As the stream is played, the client may select from a number of different alternate streams containing the same material encoded at a variety of data rates, allowing the streaming session to adapt to the available data rate. At the start of the streaming session, the client downloads an extended M3U (m3u8) playlist containing the metadata for the available sub-streams. HLS is widely used for streaming video and audio over the internet to a variety of devices.