Gabucino wrote:

Why is this even an issue? […]
Show full quote

Why is this even an issue?

VileRancour wrote:

I tried DDG for a while recently, but unfortunately it uses that infuriating "load more results as you scroll down" system, with no pagination, so it's a no-go for me.

https://duckduckgo.com/lite/

Using inferior and spyware web crawlers like Google was a sign of weakness since some years back, and is completely inexcusable at the end of 2013. (Took a look at Blekko, but it uses JavaScript, therefore it didn't work at all.)

I am baffled about what drives people to read or - even - post youtube comments. Why on earth would anyone want any of that?

Also, why would anyone use a browser for playing streaming video? On Mac, there's the MacTubes util, where you can customize your preferences (HD, non-HD, using MPEG4 with QuickTime or HTML5 or just plain shit Flash player, etc), use a non-webbased search function, all that stuff. YT itself can't even play a low-res video on a 1.2Ghz G4. Who would (in their right mind) use it? I'm sure there's a Windows alternative for this.

I'd like to see some sort of an unofficial YouTube "client" for PC OSes that allows you to browse, watch, comment, etc. like you would on YouTube, but it would work independently of a web browser and play back videos using the same sort of method that a program like VLC would, thus improving playback performance. It would have to be done in such a way that it's open source and freely available, so that if Google decides to sue the creators of the program, the Striesand effect would come into play and people would keep propogating and developing new copies of the program.

An official client wouldn't do because YouTube would simply try to lock it down in all sorts of stupid ways, and insert ads and such. As well, I can't see an official client even being developed in the first place because the Google people would be like "lol if ur on a pc u can use youtube thru a browser!!1!1" whereas on mobile they have no problems releasing an official app because they know that mobile browsers are shit, and that many mobile users are subserviant sheep that will put up with bullshit like locked-down functionality and such.

On Windows I use (S)MPlayer to play videos delivered over HTTP. Its buffering is as reliable as that of sound players. You can set the buffer size as large as you want. Remember how until recently YouTube wasted bandwidth by downloading the entire video immediately, even when the user didn't intend to watch it in full and only wanted to comment or watch a few scenes. One can use the video player to play audio links in the absence of a smaller sound player.

I wish (but I can only wish) that all streaming video was distributed this way, with organization and commenting handled by a trusted forum engine. I already said so on the modern web thread. Instead, even "underground" sites now openly link to YouTube.

The hypothetical YouTube client would get disabled soon enough, and would perpetually be in development stage with part of the features rendered broken by Google. Such client would essentially be a leeching tool.

j7n wrote:

On Windows I use (S)MPlayer to play videos delivered over HTTP. Its buffering is as reliable as that of sound players. You can set the buffer size as large as you want. Remember how until recently YouTube wasted bandwidth by downloading the entire video immediately, even when the user didn't intend to watch it in full and only wanted to comment or watch a few scenes. One can use the video player to play audio links in the absence of a smaller sound player.

I wish (but I can only wish) that all streaming video was distributed this way, with organization and commenting handled by a trusted forum engine. I already said so on the modern web thread. Instead, even "underground" sites now openly link to YouTube.

The hypothetical YouTube client would get disabled soon enough, and would perpetually be in development stage with part of the features rendered broken by Google. Such client would essentially be a leeching tool.

It would then become an arms race to see whose will breaks first. Google may be a big company, but the open-source community is even bigger. 😉

j7n wrote:

On Windows I use (S)MPlayer to play videos delivered over HTTP.

Does it work on Windows/Firefox too? If so, How? I've been looking for something like that for some time now cos I use Agent Switcher to get lighter Internet pages on my netbook, making it believe it's a tablet

Gemini000 wrote:

I'm getting close to the point where I may even stop using their search engine entirely if they can't get their act together.

Since I started using duckduckgo.com or more recently its light version I am getting lesser garbage during searches... I don't wanna say Google is dying as a search engine but sometimes it gets as ridiculous as an automatic translator... I guess it's happening something similar they did with Yahoo!: They offer lots of services but they leave the search behind and the search is no longer effective...

butterfly wrote:

j7n wrote:

On Windows I use (S)MPlayer to play videos delivered over HTTP.

Does it work on Windows/Firefox too? If so, How? I've been looking for something like that for some time now cos I use Agent Switcher to get lighter Internet pages on my netbook, making it believe it's a tablet

Firefox would need to have an extension for downloading YouTube videos (to capture the direct link) and its context menu customized to enable launching of a media player from within a webpage. I don't know if FF is as customisable.

To get lightweight YouTube, people use VideoLAN Client, and I myself am using Feather, which disables most page functionality, but videos remain available in full quality (for now).

YouTube's quality is so shitty that any codec and other file host would work at least as well if not better.

I decided to install SMPlayer, and I have to say that I really like it. I haven't tried it yet on Windows, but the Linux version is pretty much perfect. It allows you to watch AND search AND download, all without opening a browser. 😁 It does a better job of streaming than YouTube does as well. All it's missing is commenting, but since Google broke that by intertwining it with Google+, I don't see the SMPlayer people implementing it anytime soon.

UPDATE: So I finally bit the bullet and stopped my G+ boycott, seeing as Google isn't likely to give up on the whole G+/YouTube integration thing. Luckily, it turns out that you can actually make a G+ account using your YouTube channel's name. It probably gave me this option since I signed up for YouTube a few years back when you could still use a non-gmail address. Anyhow, I'm just glad I'll be able to comment on YouTube videos again.