HLS stream parsing failing with invalid date format

[mtinnes]

Version

Media3 1.8.0

More version details

We are using an Kiloview E3 video encoder for streaming HLS and are encountering the following error:

From what I can tell the date string provided by the encoder is missing the minutes from the time zone offset of the ISO8601 date string. Is it possible to relax the matching on XS_DATE_TIME_PATTERN in order to allow missing minutes and default to 0 when missing?

Playback error (Explain with AI)
  androidx.media3.exoplayer.ExoPlaybackException: Source error
      at androidx.media3.exoplayer.ExoPlayerImplInternal.handleIoException(ExoPlayerImplInternal.java:937)
      at androidx.media3.exoplayer.ExoPlayerImplInternal.handleMessage(ExoPlayerImplInternal.java:907)
      at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:102)
      at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:223)
      at android.os.HandlerThread.run(HandlerThread.java:67)
  Caused by: androidx.media3.common.ParserException: Invalid date/time format: 2025-12-04T14:00:07.736386-06 {contentIsMalformed=true, dataType=1}
      at androidx.media3.common.util.Util.parseXsDateTime(Util.java:1728)
      at androidx.media3.exoplayer.hls.playlist.HlsPlaylistParser.parseMediaPlaylist(HlsPlaylistParser.java:969)
      at androidx.media3.exoplayer.hls.playlist.HlsPlaylistParser.parse(HlsPlaylistParser.java:352)
      at androidx.media3.exoplayer.hls.playlist.HlsPlaylistParser.parse(HlsPlaylistParser.java:75)
      at androidx.media3.exoplayer.upstream.ParsingLoadable.load(ParsingLoadable.java:185)
      at androidx.media3.exoplayer.upstream.Loader$LoadTask.run(Loader.java:453)
      at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1167)
      at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:641)
      at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:923)

MediaPlayer error occurred. What: 3001, Extra: 0

Devices that reproduce the issue

Amazon Signage Stick

Devices that do not reproduce the issue

No response

Reproducible in the demo app?

No

Reproduction steps

Create HLS content source using the HlsMediaSource factory with fromUrl() pointing to the stream provided by the E3 encoder.

                mediaSource = new HlsMediaSource.Factory(dataSourceFactory)
                        .createMediaSource(MediaItem.fromUri(uri));

Expected result

HLS stream should function without requiring minutes provided in the ISO8601 date string if stream provider does not include it.

Actual result

Playback failed to initialize with: MediaPlayer error occurred. What: 3001, Extra: 0

Media

HLS stream specifically as provided by the KiloView E3.

Bug Report

• You will email the zip file produced by adb bugreport to android-media-github@google.com after filing this issue.

[icbaker]

Just to clarify, am I correct that your stream has a date-time string something like:

2025-12-05T11:58:02.456+01

And ExoPlayer is expecting:

2025-12-05T11:58:02.456+0100

It looks like the +01 format is not permitted by RFC 3339 (time-minute is not optional):

time-numoffset  = ("+" / "-") time-hour ":" time-minute

Whereas RFC 3339's attempt to ABNF the ISO 8601 spec makes it clear the minutes are optional:

time-numoffset    = ("+" / "-") time-hour [[":"] time-minute]

Since the HLS spec refers to ISO 8601 and not RFC 3339 I guess that means we allow the minutes to be optional too.

[mtinnes]

That's correct, date/time is being provided as you described - no minutes and Exoplayer is expecting minutes.

[icbaker]

The commit above relaxes ExoPlayer's parsing to accept a timezone offset without minutes.