`maxPlaylistRetries` does not work for single-media (no master) HLS playlists

[stanislawadamowski]

Summary

When playing an HLS stream without a master playlist (i.e., a single .m3u8 media playlist directly referenced as the source), the vhs.maxPlaylistRetries option does not limit playlist reload attempts as expected.
The player keeps retrying indefinitely instead of stopping after the configured number of retries.

---

Environment

• Player: Video.js (with VHS)
• VHS version: http-streaming@3.17.0
• Video.js version: video.js@8.20.0
• (tested on) Browser: Chrome v141
• Source type: Single .m3u8 HLS media playlist (no master playlist) e.g., https://d305rncpy6ne2q.cloudfront.net/v1/manifest/94063eadf7d8c56e9e2edd84fdf897826a70d0df/SFP-MediaTailor-Live-HLS-Overlays/5e8170db-6fab-4d67-8b6e-825f9161ca30/0.m3u8

---

Steps to reproduce

1. Initialize a Video.js player with a link to a single HLS media playlist (no master playlist) as a source:

const player = videojs('video', {
  vhs: {
    maxPlaylistRetries: 3
  }
});

player.src({
  src: 'https://example.com/media.m3u8',
  type: 'application/x-mpegURL'
});

2. Simulate a playlist fetch error (e.g., make the .m3u8 unavailable or switch to Offline in devtools>Network> throttling)
3. Observe player network activity and logs

---

Expected behavior

• The playlist should retry loading up to maxPlaylistRetries times (in this example, 3 retries)
• After exceeding the limit, playback should stop, trigger a player error event, and not retry indefinitely

Actual behavior

• the player retries indefinitely
• maxPlaylistRetries appears to be ignored or not applied
• In contrast, when a master playlist with multiple variants is used, the retry limit works correctly (after exceeding the limit, the variant is excluded and playback errors out)

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