Auto Play Videos Update
The last time I wrote about auto play videos, the emphasis was on the growing movement away from auto play, especially with sound. Most of us would agree it can be annoying.
A simple search for auto play videos will turn up a large number of posts, like this one, showing you how to disble auto play videos for certain websites. And we all see auto play ads on our mobile devices as well as auto play everything on Facebook but in all cases, the audio is muted.
So what about your videos? iPlayerHD allows you to auto play your videos (go to your video’s Personalization menu in your dashboard to turn on the feature). How do browsers treat your iPlayerHD hosted videos? We did a test using this video which is set to auto play and here are the results (the behavior is consistant with other video hosting platforms):
Chrome and Edge auto play the video with sound.
Firefox and Safari auto play but the audio must be activated (audio icon displays in the player).
On all mobile devices including iPad (not technically mobile), it is the same as Firefox and Safari. Video plays with the audio muted and the audio icon flashing.
I do recall two years ago Chrome threatened to mute all auto play videos but that never happened. If anyone has the back story to that or why Edge also does not mute, or any other thoughts on this or any other subject, email me at wes@iplayerhd.com.
Cheers.
Wes