YouTube Going Dark On Older Devices 129
PC Mag reports on changes to the YouTube API, which have rendered YouTube apps inoperable on older consoles, smart TVs, and other video streaming devices. They're doing this because the old version of the API doesn't support some of YouTube's newer features. Newer devices might be able to upgrade — Apple handhelds that can run iOS 7 or later will have no problem, nor will 3rd-gen Apple TVs and devices running Google TV 3 or 4. But earlier Apple TVs and Google TVs running version 2 or earlier will be out of luck.
Stripped down version (Score:2, Insightful)
So offer people with older devices a version without those features.
Amazing that Google apparently thinks they have so much power in the video market that they can get away with this.
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Amazing that Google apparently thinks they have so much power in the video market that they can get away with this.
Unfortunately, they can.
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This headline makes no sense. The first version of Google TV only came out after Android was at 3.0. There is no Google TV that exists below Android 3.0.
Also, my Sony Bravia TV is pretty old (with the crappy Sony OS on it). For a while, there was a "Youtube" app and a "New Youtube" app. Now only the icon of the New Youtube app is visible (which is fine with me, the old Youtube app didn't work with my phone as well as the New Youtube app anyway).
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2.0 probably refers to second generation google tv... or whatever. not to google tv with android 2.0
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Exactly.
Besides, lets be fair here. This is not something you can't fix with a $27.49 ChromeCast key ...
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So, you have a small, semi-failing computer thing and the solution is to add another small computer thing with a different set of limitations.
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Go to youtube.com/html5 and select the html5 player, it helped on my machines.
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Richard Stallman doesn't visit YouTube, therefore neither should you.
Re:Stripped down version (Score:5, Insightful)
So offer people with older devices a version without those features.
Do you recall the last time you saw a "dumb" DVD or Blu-Ray player for sale that did not have "those" features?
Yeah, me neither. Seems they outlawed them.
TVs aren't far behind either, and soon neither will cars. What was a $20,000 base model that had these things called "options" has now become the $30,000 "base" model with all this in-dash/online crap standard.
After all, shouldn't everyone need to upgrade their new car/TV/appliance as often as your smartphone due to obsolescence?
Vendors think so.
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"Do you recall the last time you saw a "dumb" DVD or Blu-Ray player for sale that did not have "those" features?"
I bought a Sony blue ray player a couple of years back and half the network "apps" didn't even work out the box. Personally I didn't give a damn , I just wanted something to play spinning disks, but IMO it does show the contempt manufacturers hold their customers in these days.
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Yeah the problem with those features being broken is that when they update the keys on BlueRay discs, you're fucked.
You have to buy a new DVD player.
Let's say they DID work..... but sony decided not to bother updating your blueray player because it's >2 years old ....once again you're fucked.
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Good thing I have a Blu-Ray drive in my PC, and a PLEX server.
If for whatever reason my standalone Blu-Ray player stops working, that's when I plug some other class of device into that HDMI cable. I will not award a company that decides I need to buy a new thing, when the only added feature is that it's younger than the device I already have.
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Erm no you're not. Bluray discs have keys updated constantly and the require constant updates to software players only.
The only thing that would require an update to a hardware player is a change of standard (such as moving from Bluray 1.1 to 1.2) or if the device specific key is added to a revocation list, and I can't find a single example of that happening to a hardware player so far. Plenty of software players have had their keys revoked the most high profile of which was WinDVD, but that's about it.
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it does show the contempt manufacturers hold their customers in these days.
I really don't think that's what's going on here. You've got to remember that this is the iFlock generation where if the device doesn't resemble something trendy and heartsy enough for a Japanese school girl, few people will buy it. This is because most people aren't like the geek crowd found on slashdot; they basically have this mindset that if something isn't built in, then it isn't possible to do.
Let me give you an example: About six years ago I worked at Staples, and I recall having a customer come in w
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Might write a API2 to API2 proxy (Score:2)
Screw you google.
Time to write a youtube proxy ,that will allow old devices to talk to new youtube.
And we will strip you of ads too, and show a still frame of the ad, with no audio, while the proxy will still stream the ad from the source, the end device will not see it.
HAHA.
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Excellent idea, but why even show a still frame of the ad? Show some cute pictures of cats or something more interesting while the advertisement is being blocked.
Here's a business opportunity:
Basic package: pics of cats
Gold package: pics of chicks
Free customer: goat.cx
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It's not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what happens when you rely on a vendor instead of a ratified standard. Can you imagine the uproar if older HDTV tuners suddenly stopped working with new broadcasts? People were upset enough that the old analogue signals were obsolesced!
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This. All this "smart tv" nonsense is only about collecting data and, through "upgrades" like this, forcing people to only use devices which are not older than 3 years.
The EU should consider this too when they are reviewing google: google and all other tech companies should use standards. What would happen if every single railway company would have different track gauges?
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What would happen if every single railway company would have different track gauges?
Lots and lots of trans-loading stations ... and increased costs, etc. Probably would cripple the economy (as it seems to run on cheap Chinese goods that're built to break in 3-4 years in the first place ... "They don't build 'em like they used to" and all that).
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What would happen if every single railway company would have different track gauges?
Lots and lots of trans-loading stations ... and increased costs, etc. Probably would cripple the economy (as it seems to run on cheap Chinese goods that're built to break in 3-4 years in the first place ... "They don't build 'em like they used to" and all that).
By the way, in the Great War of Northern Agression in the US in the 1860's, the North, which was a bastion of socialist type controls on the people, had settled on one standard, (there were some narrow gauge railroads in use yet though) while in the less regulated South, there was apparently a lot of different approaches to railroads, resulting in a lot of unloading and reloading as shipping was a pretty complicated affair,
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Politely: "State regulation" =! "socialism" ...
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Politely: "State regulation" =! "socialism" ...
Well, I'm glad it was politely! I was being a little bit sarcastic in anticipation of the regulations iz all evil crowd chiming in. I agree that some regulation is simply needed in a modern society, or else we'll have weird stuff like people selling mortgages to people who should never ever have them. Fortunately, that'll never happen.
One of the biggest problems the south had was their immense distrust of government, and belief that lack of governance = good outcome.
We still see a lot of that today, and
Re:It's not surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
When YouTube started there was no standard for streaming video. The only working options were things like Flash and RealPlayer, so they went with Flash. Now they are moving to HTML5 and that's the problem - older devices don't support it.
The real issue is that tech companies are not used to providing software for consumer products. In the UK smart television are covered by the Sale of Goods Act. The Act says that they must last a "reasonable length of time". For a moderately priced television you would expect at least 5 years out of it, more for an expensive one. If it fails before that time you can take the vendor (not the manufacturer, the shop where you bought it) to court and argue your case, and will be entitled to compensation for lost functionality. Say the TV dies after three years, you might get 50% of the purchase price back because it only lasted half as long as you would reasonably expect it to.
Loss of functionality due to discontinuation of service is new but seems to be covered by existing conventions. If part of a product breaks and the vendor can't fix it you can get compensation. That was the basis for the £85 refund on a Playstation 3 some guy got from Amazon when Sony removed the Other OS feature.
I own a high end Panasonic plasma TV. It is the year after the ones that are being cut off, but I was worried for a while. I use YouTube every day on it. If it were to break down and stop showing YouTube, a feature I specifically wanted when I bought it, I'd go back to the shop and ask for compensation, say 30% of the purchase price. Alternatively they could offer me an alternative, like a new TV or perhaps a smart BluRay player, assuming I could add it to my system without breaking my existing set-up. I'd also settle for say £80 to cover the cost of an Amazon FireTV stick.
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I bet you Plex will write a Youtube wrapper/proxy so that html5 source url will transcode back to the old format whatever that is.
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There's no such thing as "HTML5" video. It's H.264 and it's a standard.
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I'd also settle for say £80 to cover the cost of an Amazon FireTV stick.
You'd want 80 quid for something Amazon will sell you today for 35?
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It's £80: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Amazon... [amazon.co.uk]
Where can I get one for £35?
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It's right there on the front page of amazon.co.uk, FireTV Stick the Most Powerful Streaming Media Stick" 35 pounds.
Try this link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/pro... [amazon.co.uk]
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That's the FireTV _box_, not the stick. The Stick is 35 pounds. You give up the voice remote and a bit of processing horsepower, but unless you really want to use it for gaming, it shouldn't make a difference.
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I own a high end Panasonic plasma TV. It is the year after the ones that are being cut off, but I was worried for a while. I use YouTube every day on it. If it were to break down and stop showing YouTube, a feature I specifically wanted when I bought it, I'd go back to the shop and ask for compensation, say 30% of the purchase price.
And if you had bought a TV without that nonsense inside of it, and got that functionality in a separate device, then if you did wind up having to exchange it, that would be a lot less hassle. Even in countries where there are effective consumer protection laws, smart TVs are still dumb.
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The smart functions are great when they work. For a long time I didn't bother using XMBC any more because the TV's built in network media player was more than adequate. The YouTube, iPlayer and Netflix apps are very useful to have too, and getting a third party device wouldn't guarantee that they keep working either. iPlayer and Netflix use DRM so open source players periodically break.
Basically you are screwed no matter what, but at least we can punish companies that screw us financially. Money is the only
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Unless you wanted to settle for a lower performance display, you could not find a Plasma TV from Panasonic (the Cadillac of all TVs) without "smart" features. Even today, almost two years since they stopped making them, these TVs run circles around the current crop of LCD-based ones. Therefore, no, the "smart" features were not optional...
Re:It's not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the problem is not Flash or HTML5.
The problem is that the old YouTube players were much better than the current one, because well, they didn't support ads.
The new YouTube apps support the Google APIs and they return ads, both the pop up and interstitials, while the old APIs didn't support it.
Back when YouTube was in the old days of getting marketshare, and API use is low, it made sense. These days, with Google monetizing stuff, well, they need all youtube players to support ads.
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When YouTube started there was no standard for streaming video.
Horsehist. It was trivial to embed a stream and use NetShow (later renamed to Windows Media Server) to serve it up, a decade before fucking Youtube.
I remember watching entire episodes of ZDTV shows this way because they loaded the entire episode but merely changed the cut in and cut out times to serve up clips.
The requisite "standard" was nothing more than having an installed media player capable of reading ASF files and fetching the stream. If you wanted it in the web page, your browser just needed to ha
there WAS a standard (Score:2)
RTP/RTSP (RCFCs http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1889.txt [ietf.org] 1889 and https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2326 [ietf.org] 2326, respectively) have been around since the 1990s, while youtube didn't come around until this century.
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Also browsers that once played HTML5 video fine now all of a sudden have a problem. Obviously there is a standard but Google wants to force some additional tracking feature that the older version didnt support.
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So you are saying that standards are somehow immune and then citing an example of where a standard service stopped working? There is no immunity when you're consuming content from a 3rd party. Standards have nothing to do with it what so ever. You are relying 100% on someone offering something to you in a format that they choose in the hope that the format provided is something compatible with your equipment.
Posted from a web-browser because no one supports Gopher anymore.
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That's what happens when you rely on a vendor instead of a ratified standard.
A hundred times this.
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Erm... is it just me that immediately thinks of DVB-T here? That's exactly what happened.
In the UK we were pushed to upgrade to "digital" (DVB-T). Within a few years, DVB-T2 - an incompatible standard that required hardware upgrades - was actually required to support HDTV channels, and even the "extra" channels that couldn't fit on standard DVB.
Just being a standard doesn't stop obsoletion. Wireless shows you that. Within days of actually being ratified as a standard, the next wireless standard is in th
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"This is the cost of change, evolution and rapid development. Things get left behind, even if they were good products/services. "
Who says its a cost we want to pay? Millennials might be happy blowing money to upgrade to the latest Ooo Shiny! tech every 2 years but some of us have more important things to spend it on. I'm not going to be some consumer sheep/fanboy upgrading all the time just to keep some corporations bank balance in the black.
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Just being a standard doesn't stop obsoletion. Wireless shows you that. Within days of actually being ratified as a standard, the next wireless standard is in the works and people start pushing our pre-N or pre-AC products.
Yet you can still configure an -AC AP to allow -b devices to connect to it. B-only devices were last made in, what, 2001? It's limiting, and sometimes not the default, but real standards usually try to incorporate backwards-compatibility if they can.
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What do you mean if? This has happened in Denmark, when they went from analog to digital terrestrial broadcasts.
First to MPEG2, and latest to MPEG4, a lot of owners of older TVs had to purchase external boxes if they still wanted to receive the national TV signals.
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The difference between the Analog/Digital switch being that it was a government mandated change. Everyone knew about it for a very long time and there was a legitimate reason for the change (to free up a scarce public resource). In Australia at least, the government even offered coupons for Digital TV tuners so that existing TV's could still be used.
In this case, Google just can't be bothered supporting their old API any more. (I wouldn't be surprised if their new API forces the collection of more data or s
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You get what you pay for...
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Can you imagine the uproar if older HDTV tuners suddenly stopped working with new broadcasts?
Odds are some "smart" TV's are losing YouTube, or will with the next change. By the end of their 20-year life-expectancy, most of those things will only be able to play HDTV and HDMI. The ones that aren't bricked by malicious malware by then, anyway.
There might even be some that lose functions before the warranty runs out - is the manufacturer liable for firmware updates to maintain functionality?
Google's clearly
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It doesn't have to be this way and it has little to do with standards. Netflix streaming today still works fine on devices that are first generation from many years ago. This is despite all of the new functions and features they have come out with since then - heck they even changed their whole DRM scheme for many players.
The main difference is YouTube has little incentive to keep supporting these old devices since they don't generate much, of any, ad revenue (heck they might not even support ads), whereas
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Actually, this sort of happened with NetFlix too. The older WDTV Live Plus box I have has a NetFlix app in it, but they changed their "standards" and the older app doesn't recognize family member segmentation. The newer NetFlix apps ask who is watching so it can keep stats and faves for each family member, the older app did not support this. If I use the older app, anything I watch will affect the tracking for other users in my family. Fortunately, the problem is just an annoyance at worst, since after
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People were upset enough that the old analogue signals were obsolesced!
Yup, this. What we saw was the unholy kludge of NTSC video television, which was kept for years, so that old early 1950's TVs would still be compatible, being sacrificed. Gramma could still watch the first TV she ever bought - if it wasn't in the landfill, a victim of proton decay.
NTSC television is the counter example to all this, an illustration of what happens when you force a standard on people long past the time it should ever have been used.
Slashdotters are becoming the The Crazy Uncle of technolo
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No, NTSC color was implemented the way it was so that the B&W 1950s and 60s TVs of, you know, last YEAR could be kept. Then we held off on digital because the color TVs of the 70s, 80s, and 90s would be useless without a digital tuner box and a brand new antenna, which the former ended up being paid for through taxes... which was a c
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What is your point? That only old grandmas watched non-digital terrestrial TV?.
My point is that once upon a time, slashdotters were interested in technology. Now all too many think it is the enemy.
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Maybe they are just getting tired of endless upgrade-treadmill running for nearly zero gain in benefits or features. Technology is still interesting, but as we get older we see the "dark side" of technological improvements, including a whole new world of ways corps can fuck people over.
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Maybe they are just getting tired of endless upgrade-treadmill running for nearly zero gain in benefits or features. Technology is still interesting, but as we get older we see the "dark side" of technological improvements, including a whole new world of ways corps can fuck people over.
As cute as that sounds, I'm sitting here enjoying the NHL playoffs in high-def, and enjoying a very clean signal.
Watching television on a old school set is simply awful. And as a 3-D animator (just one part of my job) HD is a Godsend. There were not many things as depressing as the old frame buffer days, when you converted your nice sharp 3-D animations to NTSC then on to tape.
Missing those days is like missing lead paint in your kid's bedroom.
But let me ask, was there some point in time when techno
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Not trying to be cute. Nor am I an aging technophobe, but what I said is very true, most new technologies are created with the purest and best intentions, but quickly or occasionally over time, people think of ways to pervert them and use them for their own gain rather than the good for which they were intended.
I'm definitely not looking backward nor pining for the past. Your assumption about me is 100% wrong. However, in 50+ years on the planet I have seen many things heralded as great inventions which d
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Certainly forced obsolescence is a fair criticism of single vendor. But let's use your analogy of HDTV
In 1936 the British invented the first HDTV, followed by a French model 1in 1949 and a Soviet model in 1958
In 1964 NHK decided to start producing HDTV televisions and broadcasts. They had those going by 1972
During the 1970s several other vendors in other countries got involved
In 1979 the Higher definition study group was created
In 1981 the first USA manufacturer got involved
In 1983 the 1979 was rewritten
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All of these are factors on desktops as well. Lately, when I open up a machine I disconnect and remove the DVD drive. Better air flow, less power draw and less phantom drive openings (happens on two of my machines).
Buy a DVD caddy to SSD adaptor dude (Score:2)
Then you can put 2 SSDs in your laptop.
Better than one.
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Not so much lighter, but thinner.
All those motors, plus the space for the disk and it's insert / extract mechanism are big in comparison to the total volume of today's notebooks.
The days of optical media are over except for archival purposes. I've been living there for about 3 years now - all my video is streamed on my network from a FreeBSD box. All my software installs are on that same FreeBSD box as installers in folders, or disk images. All CDs, DVDs, and Blu-Ray discs have been ripped and are sittin
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Standards don't mean a damned thing because standards change
wtf? for instance?
Expected lifetime 3 years. (Score:1)
So now even my television set has an expected lifetime of less then 3 years?
Never rely on google anymore.
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So now even my television set has an expected lifetime of less then 3 years?
Yes. Along with your car that came with all those fancy in-dash electronic systems standard that are now obsolete.
Along with your DVD and Blu-Ray players. They're all so "smart" these days too.
Never rely on google anymore.
Yes, because they're the only vendor in the game...Riiiight.
Good luck narrowing down the manufacturer to blame when IoT takes over. You think obsolescence is bad now..
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Re:Expected lifetime 3 years. (Score:5, Interesting)
I watch YouTube on my TV. Find the video via the Android App, share it with the Kodi remote app and it starts playing on my TV. Easy.
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And when you perform several "upgrades" and the stick won't accept more updates in several years, possible more time that the smart TVs themselves, you won't feel bad discarding the stick instead of the complete TV set.
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And this is why I never bothered with a SmartTV.
What makes you think the modern dumb TV will last any longer?
We apparently have a smart TV. I don't know exactly I've never actually pushed the button that starts the supposed smart bit, but to me the smarts in a TV is like a centre console in the car. It's just part of some cars, I never use it, and I couldn't care less if the car has it or not.
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Exactly. My TV came with a little USB WiFi thing that I absolutely did not plug in, and "apps" for YouTube, NetFlix, Pandora which I have never used. Now the YouTube one is likely broken, and while that makes me slightly annoyed it was also the world's most predictable occurrence of something being made obsolete.
I'll continue using YouTube on my laptop or my tablet where the experience isn't atrocious (I can TYPE on them), NetFlix and Amazon Video from the media PC stashed in the cabinet that also serves
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I'll continue using YouTube on my laptop or my tablet where the experience isn't atrocious (I can TYPE on them), NetFlix and Amazon Video from the media PC stashed in the cabinet that also serves as DVR and PLEX client, and not using Pandora at all.
Not that it matters, but I've found the youtube app on things like the apple TV and roku to be quite good when integrated with your youtube account. You login to the account on both devices (one time login for the TV app) and then the youtube app on your phone or youtube itself on your computer detects that there is a TV linked the the account and will actually give you the option to throw the youtube video you're watching to the TV for viewing. My father uses this feature with his tablet, finding and que
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If only it were solely Google. My 3 year old Apple tablet is not only obsolete, but has been for more than a year. No upgrades, no fixes, no revisions.
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The only Apple tablet that doesn't get any updates is the original iPad introduced in March of 2010 and discontinued in March 2011 -- over four years old.
BUY MORE SHIT!!!!!! (Score:1)
Growing up I remember 50s and 60s TVs still working into the 00s (until the new digital transmission I get) and 20s-30s still working.
WTF is it with this generation of companies that they expect me to replace big-ticket items after 18 months? Especially in this case, I'm sure it has nothing to do with the core functionality itself, just features that maybe 2% of people use or for Googletube to push it's increasingly heavier amount of ads (yeah, I know, "Skip Ad", we both know that's going away as soon as t
Re:BUY MORE (Score:2)
I don't know if you've noticed but today's generation just ignores ads. I work in schools - the pupils do not see anywhere near as many ads as I did when I was a child. TV ads are dead - they are background noise. We've trained children to ignore all ads in games and online. Streaming services mean that ads have to be forced and - inevitably - the kids find a way to download without ads anyway.
I bet you could hum the tune to several hundreds ads if you went through one of those websites that shows you o
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
and probably need the new Youtube upgrade to watch this!
I sense more regulatory woes coming. (Score:3, Interesting)
Google is already in trouble with the EU. This latest tactic is the sort of stuff that even a convicted monopolist like Microsoft wouldn't pull because it would justifiably piss off a lot of their customers. So why does Google do it? Because it proves once again the people who use google services aren't their "customers". Google is an advertising business. You're just eyeballs that google sells to their customers.
Hmm (Score:1)
Which is why I bought a huge LCD screen that was just a screen, not "smart" at all.
The computer tied to the end of it is cheap and easily replaceable.
Obsolete smart TV's? (Score:2)
Don't think I will be buying a TV for Smart features anymore.
The features will all become obsolete
I will just get something like Roku or other devices that will keep pace with the time.
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Don't think I will be buying a TV for Smart features anymore.
The features will all become obsolete
Yeah, it definitely makes a person think before making the next purchase. I would expect most of the "smart" features on my Samsung TVs to work for the life of the unit.
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Seems like what started out as the smart TV revolution will now be turning into tech cycle obsolescence
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Yeah, I made that mistake. Never again. And it has nothing to do with being obsolete.
The difference between Panasonic's "Smart TV" apps and the cheapest plug in sticks (FireTV/Chrome) or puck STBs is absolute night and day in terms of functionality and responsiveness. We've given up on the embedded apps entirely because they're so slow and buggy.
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So in the end... this is probably a great thing. No more delusions of the continued functioning of smart TV's for the life of the TV.
Personally, I have always wanted just a really great panel without all the bells and whistles. We don't watch TV much but do sling things to it from the computer, phones and puck devices. I find all of the remotes these days have a billion buttons. I end up inadvertently pressing something and get stuck on settings I can't get out of. Very Very annoying.
Atari (Score:4, Insightful)
Still mad I could never get Youtube working on my Atari 800.
Now this!!!!
This sucks for me (Score:2)
I have an older Roku with an unofficial YouTube client on it. It's not heavy on features but it allows searching and is fast and simple, and has no ads (that is probably why Google is changing things!)
I have a Roku 3 and the YouTube client on there is awful, it's slow and cumbersome and worst of all it keeps autoplaying videos after the one you're watching finishes, with absolutely no way to turn that off. No doubt it is to display more ads for those that accidentally leave YouTube running, but if I was a
Yep, ran into that one myself (Score:2)
I have a Panasonic Plasma HDTV, one of it's features is being able to watch Youtube. This month there has been an over lay on the Youtube screen that as of April 30th it will no longer be available. Checking it now says Youtube app was terminated April 20, 2015. clicking on it says Google no longer supports the YouTube app on this device and gives a link of youtube.com\devicesupport for more information. No I haven't visited the site.
Youtube was a nice addition, lots of full length movies.
When you use Google for everything (Score:1)
When you use Google for everything, then your only option is to obey Google. Thanks God Google only sells ads, wait a minute ...
iPad 1 (Score:2)
I actually found out about it this morning, when my almost-three-year-old handed me my old iPad 1 and said "Daddy, it's broken."
Fortunately, it was just playing the "it's going to break soon" video and I got her back to her Sesame Street videos, but in a week or so I'm going to have a very angry little girl on my hands.
The darn thing was last sold in 1Q2011, so I get that it's 4-year-old technology, but gee. That doesn't seem that old.
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Does it? I haven't notice on our kids iPad2.
Battery life seems fine.
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