AudioPlayer stream works on only some Echos

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Cliff asked Sep 9, '17

AudioPlayer stream works on only some Echos

I have developed an Alexa skill to stream various local radio stations. The skill works fine under test on my Echo, but often does not start playing the stream on my Echo Dot (both on same Alexa account on same network), and doesn't play at all on a friend's Echo who is invited on the beta program.

When trying on my Echo Dot, I am getting the following error: 'error': {'message': 'Player error occurred: Player has been buffering for at least 30 seconds', 'type': 'MEDIA_ERROR_INTERNAL_DEVICE_ERROR' for one station stream, but another station will stream fine.All the stations work fine on the Echo and both are up to date with firmware.

Note: in all cases, the lambda function is running because the text "Finding your station" is being spoken. So it is specifically down to the AudioPlayer directive that is failing for some reason.

Any thoughts on why there would be a difference result on different Echos, whether on the same account or on the beta program?

Thanks

Cliff

alexa skills kit echo audio

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Answer 1 · 2017-09-10T07:08:38Z

jm001 answered Sep 10, '17

Pure speculation here, but this is interesting

https://forums.developer.amazon.com/questions/85602/give-audioplayer-requests-a-user-agent-or-allow-th.html

According to the post, the Dots are now putting out a User-Agent string (which I have noticed) , but the Echo devices are evidently not (I don't have one to test this). I wonder if the stream source is filtering on User-Agent somehow and hence causing this ? i.e. allowing no User-Agent, but filtering on known devices if the User-Agent exists .... This wouldn't explain at all why your friends Echo doesn't work though.

Might be worth testing the stream source manually with different User-Agents and see if there is a clue there.

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Answer 2 · 2017-09-25T19:02:19Z

Brian@Amazon answered Sep 25, '17

That's a possibility. It is also possible it has to do with the audio format you are using, so providing that information may help us debug.

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Answer 3 · 2018-02-13T18:13:13Z

Jonathan Horniblow answered Feb 13, '18

This appears to affected only the Dot but has been a huge issue for hundreds of skills for almost six months now, and a great source of frustration given how long it has taken to fix given how long it has been known about by Amazon. However, I have been assured that a fix is in testing for release "in a few weeks".

There are at least 8 other threads discussing this, but I can't link to them or the post gets "moderated".

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