A current Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Edge. On a phone, a tablet or a laptop.
Everything except the live video works in almost anything. The video is the fussy part, and it is worth understanding why.
Why the video is the fussy part
A live stream is not a video file. It arrives in small pieces, continuously, and the browser has to stitch them together as they come — which it does through a modern browser feature that older versions either lack or implement badly. Safari handles this kind of stream natively; most other browsers do it through that feature.
So when a show will not play but the rest of the site is fine, the browser is almost always the reason, and it is almost always an old one.
What to do if a show will not play
In order, because the first two fix most of it:
1. Update the browser. Not the page — the browser itself. This is the fix far more often than anything else.
2. Reload the page. A stream that lost its place does not always recover on its own.
3. Turn off a strict blocker or privacy mode, for this site. Aggressive content blockers sometimes break video players specifically while leaving the page looking fine.
4. Try a different browser on the same device. If it plays there, you have your answer.
5. Check the connection, because a stalled video and a slow connection look identical. How fast does my internet need to be?
The video is green, black or upside down
In-app browsers
Opening a link from inside a chat app sometimes uses that app's own stripped-down browser, which is the one place live video breaks for no visible reason.
If a show will not play from a link somebody sent you, open it in your real browser instead. There is usually an "open in browser" option in the corner.
On an old device
An older phone or tablet will usually watch happily. What goes wrong is heat rather than power — a device that gets warm throttles itself, and the video is the first thing to suffer. Take the case off, keep it out of the sun, and it is often fine. What you need to watch a show
For sellers going live
Broadcasting asks more of a device than watching does, and it is built around a phone rather than a laptop. If a rehearsal is rough, that is the thing to test before a real show. Can I practise before going live for real?
More: what you need to watch a show, does Metzee work on a tablet, why is there no iPhone app.