Glossary
HLS (HTTP Live Streaming)
HLS, or HTTP Live Streaming, is an adaptive bitrate streaming protocol developed by Apple that delivers audio and video by breaking the stream into short HTTP-served segments. It works natively in every major browser and device, making it the dominant format for large-scale live and on-demand video delivery.
General definition
HLS works by segmenting the media stream into small files (typically 2-10 seconds long) and serving them over standard HTTP via a CDN. A manifest file (the .m3u8 playlist) lists available segments and quality variants. The player downloads segments sequentially and switches quality levels based on available bandwidth.
- Adaptive bitrate: multiple quality levels in a single stream, auto-selected by the player
- CDN-friendly because segments are ordinary HTTP files that cache well
- Native support in all major browsers, iOS, Android, and Smart TVs
- Latency of 6-30 seconds in standard mode; Low-Latency HLS (LL-HLS) reduces this to 2-4 seconds
HLS is the standard for large-scale video delivery. The trade-off is latency: standard HLS adds 10-30 seconds of delay, which makes it unsuitable for interactive use cases like live calls. WebRTC handles sub-second latency for interactive calling; HLS handles reliable, high-scale broadcast delivery. Live streaming workflows commonly ingest via RTMP and output to viewers via HLS.
In the Ethora ecosystem
Ethora’s voice and video calling uses WebRTC for real-time interactive calls with sub-second latency. HLS fits Ethora deployments where a call or event is recorded and the recording is made available for asynchronous playback, or where a live broadcast stream is consumed by a large audience that does not need to interact.
On self-hosted deployments, teams can configure the media pipeline to output HLS segments for recording storage, enabling compliance-friendly video archiving with standard HTTP-based playback that integrates easily into existing content delivery infrastructure.
