i've tried this on my N7 with ToT, and it does seem to play okay.  It ended up with a hardware codec (OMX.qcom... in the logs).

Can you check the logs for "OMX." and see if you're getting OMX.qcom... or OMX.google...  The latter is software, and I've seen some fairly big differences between their capabilities.

I can see neither :(

All the logs I'm getting are:
--------- beginning of main
E/WifiStateMachine(  534): WifiStateMachine CMD_START_SCAN source -2 txSuccessRate=2.42 rxSuccessRate=2.44 targetRoamBSSID=any RSSI=-44
I/wpa_supplicant(  627): wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-STARTED 
W/chromium( 8252): [WARNING:webmediaplayer_impl.cc(345)] Using MultibufferDataSource
D/MdnsClient( 1258): Multicast lock held. Releasing
E/chromium( 8252): [ERROR:render_media_log.cc(23)] MediaEvent: PIPELINE_ERROR demuxer: could not open
D/MdnsClient( 1258): #acquireLock. Multicast lock not held. Acquiring
E/WifiStateMachine(  534): WifiStateMachine CMD_START_SCAN source 10007 txSuccessRate=0.61 rxSuccessRate=0.61 targetRoamBSSID=any RSSI=-47
I/wpa_supplicant(  627): wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-STARTED 


Note: This is a user build (we don't have Userdebug builds of stock Android), so I might be missing some logs :(

On one of our devices which has the same issue I'm getting "OMX.google.aac.decoder"
(Since this is a software decoder I assume it shouldn't matter that this isn't a Nexus?)

Seems to be working on Chrome Dev

Since the last version I had tested this on was from June 23rd, it might have been fixed in the last few days.

Are you aware of any Unified Media Pipeline fixes from the last couple days that might've fixed this, and if so are they scheduled to be cherry-picked over to v52? :)

not off-hand.  we've been merging fixes back to m52 almost always.

can you retry with 52 to verify that it's not transient?  i still have this weird feeling about sw / hw codec, which depends on the state of the device.

i'm also unsure why your logs aren't showing anything.  even if chrome's logging level is low, mediaserver tends to produce a bunch of noise when allocating a codec.

what version of android do you have installed?

Retried on latest v52 from the play store (52.0.2743.49 - which is up-to-date according to omahaproxy) and it's still failing.

Is there a way to get the current 'in dev' v52 apk?
(Assuming something like that exists. We usually rely on omahaproxy to tell us which stable / beta version is the latest for each platform)

caveat: this is an entirely untested build.

https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chrome-unsigned/android-B0urB0N/52.0.2743.62/arm/Chrome.apk

Works like a charm, thanks! :)
Guess we'll just have to wait for 52.62+ then - thanks!!! :)

This was fixed by  issue 618109 , so marking as duplicate.