Our iOS/AppleTV video content playback app uses AVPlayer to play HLS video streams and supports both custom and system playback UIs. The Fairplay content key is retrieved using AVContentKeySession. AirPlay is supported too.
When the iPhone is connected to a TV through the lightning Apple Digital AV Adapter (A1438), the app is mirrored as expected.
Problem: when using an iPhone or iPad on iOS 18.1.1, FairPlay-protected HLS streams are not played and a CoreMediaErrorDomain -12035 error is received by the AVPlayerItem. Also, once the issue has occurred, the mirroring freezes (the TV indefinitely displays the app playback screen) although the app works fine on the iOS device.
The content key retrieval works as expected (I can see that 2 content key requests are made by the system by the way, probably one for the local playback and one for the adapter, as when AirPlaying) and the error is thrown after providing the AVContentKeyResponse.
Unfortunately, and as far as I know, there is not documentation on CoreMediaErrorDomain errors so I don't know what -12035 means.
The issue does not occur:
- on an iPhone on iOS 17.7 (even with FairPlay-protected HLS streams)
- when playing DRM-free video content (whatever the iOS version)
- when using the USB-C AV Adapter (whatever the iOS version)
Also worth noting: the issue does not occur with other video playback apps such as Apple TV or Netflix although I don't have any details on the kind of streams these apps play and the way the FairPlay content key is retrieved (if any) so I don't know if it is relevant.
