I’ve been using youtube for really useful things for a few years. On April 20th, the following video started to appear instead of the ones I wanted:
I get this for about one third of the videos — the rest play fine, as before.
So it’s saying that I’m viewing Yotube with an unsupported device. Which is probably fair enough. I’m searching youtube via the API, getting an URL via youtube-dl, and then playing the video with mplayer under Linux. Neither really sounds like what Google would call a supported device.
Devices affected: Select devices manufactured in 2012 and earlier, including Sony TVs & Blu-ray Discs, Panasonic TVs & Blu-ray Discs, older iOS devices, and devices running older versions of Google TV.
So Google says that three year old TVs are too ancient to watch their content. Fine. Who cares about three year old TVs, anyway?
But does anybody know how to make mplayer support whatever the new format is? Or is this part of Google’s ever present drive to wall their gardens?
I’ve binged for an answer, but haven’t found anything promising…
Edit: The problem seems to be with the search API, not mplayer.