MediaPlayer and SurfaceView over multiple activities

I have a media player on one activity (called player) and I want to be able to support continuous video playback from when the player is closed into a miniature view on the parent activity.

I am able to do this just fine when it is audio only, the problem lies when I attach a SurfaceView via mediaPlayer.setDisplay();

I can attach the SurfaceView just fine initially but the problems start when I close the Player activity. If I make no changes, the mediaPlayer gets thrown into an error state somehow with the usual unhelpful errors (1, -19) etc.

I have tried using setDisplay(null) when the Player SurfaceView is destroyed which appears to work. But for some reason it resets the video stream. I've tried overriding seekTo() in order to figure out what is happening but seekTo() is not being called. I've also put logging statements everywhere I can think of but nothing is being triggered.

Why would setDisplay(null) cause my video stream to restart?

Here is my current MediaPlayer code (some of the weird stuff is from me trying to solve the issue (like isReallyPlaying()):

  private final ScheduledExecutorService scheduler = Executors.newScheduledThreadPool(1);
    private ScheduledFuture beeperhandle;

    private boolean isPaused = false;
    private BaseMedia currentMedia;

    private PlaybackService.RepeatStatus repeatStatus = PlaybackService.RepeatStatus.REPEAT_NONE;

    public void startMedia(BaseMedia model, Integer position) {
        Timber.d("Starting media");
        startBeeper();
        isPaused = false;
        lastBeep = -1;
        currentMedia = model;

        if (position != null) {
            seekTo(position);
        }
        super.start();
    }

    public BaseMedia getCurrentMedia() {
        return currentMedia;
    }



    @Override
    public void start() throws IllegalStateException {
        Timber.e("Invalid start called, should request startSong or startVideo");
    }

    private int lastBeep = -1;

    // Because isPlaying is returning false and canceling the beeper.  Probably has something to do with the surfaceview being destroyed
    private boolean isStillPlaying() {
        if (lastBeep != getCurrentPosition()) {
            lastBeep = getCurrentPosition();
            return true;
        }
        return false;
    }

    private final Runnable seekBarCheck = new Runnable() {
        public void run() {

            if (isStillPlaying() && !beeperhandle.isCancelled()) {
                EventBus.getDefault().post(new MusicStatusTimeEvent(
                        currentMedia, true, GevaldMediaPlayer.this));
            } else {
                Timber.d("Canceling Beeper, !isPlaying");
                beeperhandle.cancel(true);
            }
        }
    };

    private void startBeeper() {
        Timber.d("Starting Beeper");
        beeperhandle = scheduler.scheduleAtFixedRate(seekBarCheck, 100, 100, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
    }

    @Override
    public void seekTo(final int msec) throws IllegalStateException {
        Timber.d("Seeking to " + msec);
        if (beeperhandle != null) {
            Timber.d("Canceling beeper in prep for seek");
            beeperhandle.cancel(true);
        }
        setOnSeekCompleteListener(new OnSeekCompleteListener() {
            @Override
            public void onSeekComplete(MediaPlayer mp) {
                Timber.d("Seek complete to: " + msec);
                startBeeper();
            }
        });
        super.seekTo(msec);
    }


    @Override
    public void stop() throws IllegalStateException {
        super.stop();
        Timber.d("Stopping media");
        doStop();
    }

    private void doStop() {
        if (beeperhandle != null) {
            Timber.d("Canceling beeper, doStop");
            beeperhandle.cancel(true);
        }
        isPaused = false;
    }

    @Override
    public void pause() throws IllegalStateException {
        Timber.d("Pause requested");
        if (beeperhandle != null) {
            Timber.d("Canceling beeper, pause");
            beeperhandle.cancel(true);
        }
        doStop();
        EventBus.getDefault().post(new MusicStatusStoppedEvent(this));
        super.pause();

    }

    public boolean isPaused() {
        return isPaused;
    }

Figured it out. Apparently closing an activity causes an audio loss with a value of AudioManager.AUDIOFOCUS_LOSS.

Since I was being a good Android citizen, that was set to release the media player. But audio would then be regained which would cause my media player to get reset and hence start from the beginning.

It just happened to line up that this occurred right around the setDisplay() method.