Fixes

• Fixed a bug causing the first frame of the video to appear before the preroll on iOS Safari.
• Fixed a bug causing different ad text messages to overlap in right to left languages at smaller breakpoints.
• Fixed an issue on Tizen devices where controls did not hide when the settings menu is open.

Updates

• Added support for Tizen on 2018+ Samsung smart TVs.
• Created a Tizen demo app to showcase our initial 2018+ beta support of this platform.
• Added a new method, jwplayer().stopCasting(), which can be called to stop a casting session on a Chromecast device.
• Added a new method, getPercentViewable, which takes no arguments and returns the visibility attribute from the player's model.
• Added support for DRM robustness. To configure the player to use this feature, specify videoRobustness and/or audioRobustness in the playlist item source in the Widevine, Playready and Clearkey object within the DRM block.

Bugs

• Fixed a bug surfacing when a viewer is behind the live edge where the button stays displayed as “Live” instead of the “Not Live” configuration.
• Fixed in issue in Google IMA where VMAPs with item properties were not being updated properly.
• Fixed an issue in the VAST client where captions do not function properly after ad breaks in Safari.
• Fixed an issue where ads may fail on the JW recommendations playlists when ad preloading is configured.

Deprecations

• Removed support for rendering 360/VR videos across all devices and streaming providers due to underutilization. The player will no longer recognize or render 360 videos as expected, though the videos will still play.

Known Issues

Affecting Tizen only:

• DASH is not yet support on Tizen; DASH streams result in a black screen when played, and some even cause the app to crash entirely.
• On Tizen devices, HLS streams intermittently result in a black screen. You can return to the previous page, but the stream doesn't play and just emit a buffer warning.
• On Tizen devices, controls do not hide when the settings menu is open (will be fixed in 8.18.1).

New Features

• All license requests can now accept a VUDRM token in the request body, header, or as a query string parameter
• VPN’s and TOR networks can now be blocked by setting block_vpn_and_tor in a VUDRM token’s policy
• Widevine license server now returns x-request-id instead of vualto-transaction-id bringing it in line with web standards.

Service release. No new features.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug causing too many ID3 metadata events to fire.
• Fixed an issue where ID3 WXXX:URL data was parsed incorrectly.
• Fixed a bug where 608 captions caused the browser tab to freeze.
• Worked around a bug in Chrome 85 preventing videos from being cast.
• Fixed an issue causing inaccurate video completion data be sent to Google Ads Manager.

Fix

• Fixed a bug causing some HLS live streams to infinitely buffer.

• Improved the message read aloud by a screen reader when the keyboard shortcuts toggle is selected.
• Added the name of the menu the user will go back to if they leave a captions styling menu when using a screen reader.
• Fixed an issue causing some HLS streams to buffer infinitely in Chrome 74 and below.
• Fixed a bug where a linear ad will not play if loaded while a nonlinear ad is displayed.
• Fixed an issue in the control bar during Google IMA ads on iOS browsers where the fullscreen icon would appear but be unusable because IMA prevents fullscreening during ad playback. The button is now hidden.

New Features

• Improved license server responses to aid in issue detection
• New VUDRM cluster based in Paris has been released and is serving traffic
• The match_content_id parameter in token policies now supports content encrypted with multiple keys from our CPIX API

• Fixed an issue to work around a bug in the Google IMA SDK affecting Android Chrome 84 only where unplayable linear ad MIME types were being erroneously selected.

• Fixed an issue where calling stop() disables sound completely when resuming playback on HLS streams.
• Fixed a bug where some data was not being exposed in the on('meta') and on('metadataCueParsed') events.
• Fixed a bug where the mute/unmute button was not properly read by a screen reader.
• Fixed an issue causing some streams to show an erroneously long duration.