Byte-range requests

We’re running into an issue with a couple sites in our multi-site insstall that publish podcasts via WordPress.

Some iOS users seem to be having a problem where they start playing the podcast then a minute or two in, the file jumps back to the beginning. If they try to play again, it just jumps back again.

I posted a request for help on Apple’s podcast forum and have stumbled on an issue with “byte-range requests”. Apparently Apple recently started requiring that web servers publishing podcasts must support byte-range requests.

My web server DOES support byte-range requests, but something about the way WordPress serves the files is interfering.

Here’s the thread in the Apple support forum: https://discussions.apple.com/message/20037151#20037151

I found a trouble ticket submitted to WordPress about this (http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/15552) but it’s a couple years old and at the time they declined to work on it.

We’re already getting a lot of complaints about this. It seems to happen more frequently to iOS 6 users, but it seems like it could happen to anyone accessing an audio or video file served via WordPress on a Mac, iPhone or iPad.

Is anyone else running into this? Has anyone found a solution yet? Any chance the WP team would reconsider rolling a fix into the next core update?