Android http audio streaming and MediaPlayer

MediaPlayer class provides a player for local files and online streaming. Its a pretty flexible class and allows syn and asyn calls to suit almost every type of needs.

Formats supported by Android is at http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html

There are cases where online streams can be played on an Android emulator but not on actual Android device. This happened for Samsung Galaxy S5 with Android 5 OS.

This is what I found;

1. There are two type of AAC streams in my list of sites. Streams using AAC-LTP AAC with SBR+PS doesnt work but AAC-LC is played satisfactorily.
2. Audio in MP3 plays fine on emulator and actual Android device.

There are other APK that managed to play the same audio streams on That S5. Probably there is another type of mediaplayer-like class to stream audio with support of the AAC-LTP.

Conclusion if MediaPlayer stream doesnt play over HTTP

1. Try to play the stream on VLC player and see if it works. Verification process.
2. Seek alternative stream format if one doesnt work. Remember, only MP3 and AAC-LC works.
3. Incorporate a decoder to manage the unsupported format. 
4. Consider to use AudioTrack instead of MediaPlayer. This will require manual assignment of the codec and audio format.