Can we say that HLS uses UDP?

Hello, Apple video engineers. According to the official documentation, HLS is built on HTTP and traditionally ran on top of TCP. However, with the introduction of HTTP/3, which uses QUIC (runs on top of UDP), I would like to clarify the following:

  1. Has the official HLS specification changed in a way that allows it to be considered UDP-based when using HTTP/3? And is it fair to say that HLS supports UDP since the transport can go over HTTP/3 and QUIC?
  2. Would it be more accurate to say that HLS remains HTTP-dependent, and the transport protocol (TCP or QUIC) only determines how HTTP requests are delivered?

My thoughts: Since HTTP/3 uses QUIC running over UDP, we still can't say that HLS supports UDP in a classical way, as it is introduced in RTP, RTSP, SRT.

Can we say that HLS uses UDP?
 
 
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