[BUG][H] Video Streaming Issue with Adblock Plus Installed

[VideoStreamer]

I installed Adblock Plus yesterday before watching some streaming video in MxPlayer on the bus ride home. After seeking a few times to get to my place in the video, I was able to watch a few minutes of video, but was running into major buffering issues. I got through maybe 5 minutes of video over 15-20 minutes. After, I stopped watching the video, I noticed that Adblock Plus was still downloading.

When I got home, I saw that Adblock Plus had used 550MB of data, over the half hour that I had it installed. The entire video would have been around 200MB. I'm wondering if there is an issue with Adblock Plus not terminating connections, and that it continued to download the different parts of the video stream after I had seeked to a different position. This would explain the bandwidth usage and the buffering issues. There were no other applications installed that would have been using that much data. After uninstalling Adblock Plus, the issue went away.

[MonztA]

en/android-faq#traffic

[VideoStreamer]

This has nothing to do with the traffic getting allocated under Adblock Plus. Adblock Plus continues to download data from a connection after the connection should have stopped.

You can confirm by doing the following, first with Adblock off, then with Adblock on:

1) Run Shark to monitor traffic
2) Stream online video, wait a little
3) Skip ahead in video, wait a little
4) Stop Shark

With Adblock off, the original video stream terminates when you skip ahead, and everything stops once you leave MxPlayer.

With Adblock on, the original video stream is being transferred along with the new one when you skip ahead, and it keeps going after you exit MxPlayer.

[VideoStreamer]

It would be nice if a dev would comment on this, since this is a huge issue for anybody streaming media.

[Handmade.Mercury]

I think this happened to me as well, and it put me over my bandwidth limit with Verizon. I was streaming a video and did some timeline seeking, just as you describe. Next thing you know, I'm getting texts from Verizon telling me that I've reached 50%, then 75%, then 90% of my data limit, all in under a minute. If this is the case, then this bug could potentially cost someone a lot of money if they don't have data usage notifications enabled as I luckily did.

[keanan]

I've also experienced the issue that Handmade.Mercury has expressed. I had an interesting occurrence today when I had updated Adblock over my cellular network. After about 10 minutes I started reviving warning texts from AT&T about my data usage. My data plan for this month just started and now I have less than 25% left to last me until the end of December. I can provide further information if necessary.

[Andrey Novikov]

We are looking into that issue, YouTube app and web site work correctly with Adblock Plus. Will try to check MxPlayer whatever it it.

[Andrey Novikov]

As I see from the description MX Player is a video file player. Can you explain how to play streaming video with it?

[MonztA]

I think via its menu -> "network stream". Then paste a URL to a video there (example: http://video.computerbase.de/video/1308/htc-one-x-plus-testvideo.sd.mp4)

[Handmade.Mercury]

Also if websites host direct links to video files, android will ask which program to play it with

[VideoStreamer]

MonztA's example is correct. I think this happens for direct links to video files. I just tried the video MonztA linked in Chrome on Android, and I get the same behaviour, which I've confirmed in Shark for Android.

[Andrey Novikov]

Now I have returned to this issue but can not reproduce it. It seems that MX Player uses direct connection. I can not understand how it achieves it but Data usage screen in Android confirms it.

[DarkManX4lf]

I have a similar problem but with Netflix. With adblock plus on, I can't watch anything in Netflix. When I turn off adblock plus, Netflix works fine.

Similar problem with youtube.

[atari2600a]

Still exists. I blew through by data w/ MX player in under an hour from watching...things.

[atari2600a]

You probably can't reproduce it because you're accessing the streams through the app itself. Thin is why this is the greatest bug to reproduce: skim through video w/ MX installed until a connection fails to drop. The data should be passed through abp. Also, thanks for wasting 3GB of data 1 week into my ATT billing cycle.