The VideoLAN Forums

I need to test HLS streams by immitating a real playback. However I don't need neither video nor audio actually be outputing as I do this in the cloud (AWS EC2). VLC seems offer such an option:
vlc -I dummy --novideo --noaudio https://path/file.m3u8
However I can't see it downloads .ts files. Is there a way to make vlc downloading the files but not actually playing them?

vout=dummy aout=dummy

or codec=dummy