fix(player): keep a paused video paused and in place when its player item dies

[Quick104]

Problem

On Apple TV, a paused video can start playing by itself, sometimes from the beginning (#549). A diagnostics report from an Apple TV 4K (2nd generation, tvOS 26.6, build 57) logged the full sequence:

1. The viewer paused a Dolby Vision title at 28:11.
2. Five minutes later the player item died with -11868.
3. AetherEngine's recovery reloaded the item and called play().
4. AVPlayer refused the reloaded item's master.
5. The media-playlist fallback restarted the title at 0:00, played it, and dropped the subtitle renditions.

The fallback went back to 0:00 because it reused the session's first start position, not the position the recovery had reloaded at.

Solution

This PR moves the AetherEngine pin from a02975ed to b1e4879e. The new revision includes:

• fix(native): keep a viewer's pause when reviving a dead player item AetherEngine#10: the item-death reload keeps a viewer's pause and mounts the fresh item paused at the same position.
• fix(native): the media fallback returns to the recovery position and keeps a pause AetherEngine#11: the media fallback reloads where the refused item was placed (from fix(native): the media fallback comes back where the refused item was placed (#98) superuser404notfound/AetherEngine#621). It plays only if the viewer was playing, and counts Play and Pause from AVKit, Control Center and PiP as well as the engine's own controls.

The pin changes in project.yml, Package.resolved, THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md and the bundled README.txt. The engine's own dependencies (FFmpegBuild, SiloObjectAudio) did not change.

#549 was closed when AetherEngine#10 merged. This PR ships that fix and the rest of it in the app.

Validation

• SiloTV (tvOS Simulator), Silo (iOS Simulator) and SiloMac (macOS) build against b1e4879e with CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO. This is a compile-only check.
• On macOS, swift test passes on the engine for both PRs, locally and in the engine's CI. New tests cover:
  • The fallback position after a recovery swap.
  • The fallback's resume rule: a Play from the engine or AVKit, a pause before the refusal, and a command after it.
  • The item-death pause decision.
• Not verified on an Apple TV. The failure needs a TV that refuses the HDR master after the screensaver, and I could not reproduce that on demand. After this ships, check a TestFlight build on an Apple TV with an HDR or Dolby Vision title:
  1. Pause the title.
  2. Let the screensaver run for a few minutes.
  3. Come back and confirm the title is still paused at the same position.
  4. Press Play and confirm it resumes from there.

Validation tasks: none. No passed v1.0 case covers pausing playback.

Risks and follow-ups

• The engine change affects how native playback decides play or pause after an item death or a master refusal. A viewer who was playing resumes as before.
• Known gap: a pause from AVKit, Control Center or PiP less than a second before a master refusal still resumes, because it cannot be told apart from the refused item's own stop.
• Follow-up: the refusal still sets a process-wide HDR latch (upstream The master-refusal latch goes stale after an output-format change, and costs more than the master route superuser404notfound/AetherEngine#588), so later HDR titles play without subtitle renditions until the app returns from the background.
• Android: no change needed, since AetherEngine is Apple-only.

AI disclosure: written with Claude Opus 5.5 (claude-opus-5-5) in Claude Code (T3 Code). The Codex, Kody and CodeRabbit review bots reviewed the engine PRs. No other AI tooling was used.

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Codex Review Summary

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Review	Status	Commit	Review trigger
📝 Code Review	✅ Completed 2026-09-29T14:56:16.772869Z	fbf57a6	PR opened

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ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Advanced

Run ID: 64ad2cd7-ce50-44df-9fed-8b9df5788639

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 4e7ed67 and fbf57a6.

⛔ Files ignored due to path filters (1)

• iosApp/Silo.xcodeproj/project.xcworkspace/xcshareddata/swiftpm/Package.resolved is excluded by !**/Package.resolved

📒 Files selected for processing (3)

• THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md
• iosApp/Resources/OpenSourceLicenses/README.txt
• iosApp/project.yml

Included review availability: This review used your included allowance. Your plan provides up to 1 included review per hour; 0 remain after this review.

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The AetherEngine package pin and its source acknowledgements now reference revision b1e4879e6a41477ebef3b68e8d9f65239d1ba80b. The listed patches include paused-item recovery.

Changes

AetherEngine revision update

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Package revision and acknowledgements iosApp/project.yml, iosApp/Resources/OpenSourceLicenses/README.txt, THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md	The package pin and source links use the updated revision. The patch descriptions now include paused-item recovery.

Priority: ⬇️ Low

Estimated code review effort: 1 (Trivial) | ~4 minutes

Change: Bug fix

Suggested reviewers: zenjabba

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to fbf57

The updated engine revision and its acknowledgements are consistent, including the playback-recovery changes. No concrete merge-blocking issue remains; the change is ready for normal checks.

Architecture Summary

Architecture risk: 🔵 Low · up to fbf57

The change affects 2 systems.

Changed systems: iosApp, THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md

Architecture concerns
No architecture-level concerns identified.

Review details

Systems and components

• observed — iosApp (service) was modified; 2 changed files map to changed impact.
• observed — THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md (service) was modified; 1 changed file maps to changed impact.

Before / after behavior

• observed — Modified behavior in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md: The AetherEngine package entry adds playback recovery patches to its description and updates the pinned revision.
• observed — Modified behavior in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md: The exact-source link now points to revision b1e4879e6a41477ebef3b68e8d9f65239d1ba80b instead of a02975eda62a13c7c24a2f1ac57840a12975c0b.
• observed — Modified behavior in iosApp/Resources/OpenSourceLicenses/README.txt: The AetherEngine revision and modified-source URL were updated to the new commit; the patch list now also includes paused-item recovery. The license and other listed patches remain unchanged.
• observed — Modified behavior in iosApp/project.yml: The AetherEngine package revision is updated from a02975eda62a13c7c24a2f1ac57840a12975c0b5 to b1e4879e6a41477ebef3b68e8d9f65239d1ba80b.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely describes the primary playback fix: preserving a paused video's paused state and position after player-item failure.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description is directly related to the changeset. It explains the playback issue, the AetherEngine pin update, the upstream fixes, affected files, validation, risks, and follow-up testing.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 0 functions across 0…
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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