Channel-change lab

Faster channel changes come from one idea: keep the video player alive and just swap its feed, instead of tearing it down and rebuilding it every time. This is a live, honest version of that technique from the case study — change channels with the buttons or the ▲ ▼ arrow keys and watch the time from keypress to first frame.

Loading player…

Reuse player (loadSource swap)Off = destroy + rebuild the player on every change (the naive way).Prefetch neighbour manifestsWarm the ± 1 channels' manifests while the current one plays.

Last keypress → first frame—

Test streams over the public internet — absolute numbers depend on your connection; watch the reuse-vs-rebuild delta, not the raw ms.

Uses hls.js on public test streams. No client code or content — the same idea, rebuilt in the open.