cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/14909762
It seems YT started another attempt at blocking alternative clients. They changed something in their API and both SmartTube and Tubular (NewPipe fork) are completely broken. Apparently it started happening this past week, but we personally just felt it today.
Edit: SmartTube already has an update but still not working for 4K videos it seems. Tubular still not working but it might be due to the upstream (NewPipe) is still working on a fix.
Who is “we”?
I can’t feel it on libretube
probably a lot of people that aren’t you. but I’m glad you felt the need to rush in to state that you are not being affected.
thank goodness you aren’t. i was really worried there.
USE GRAYJAY
Yeah, my kid got to see a bunch of ads today.
sounds horrible, yesterday I couldn’t watch a video on Tubular so I just didn’t watch it.
Me, today. But with newpipe. YouTube isn’t a necessity. It’s an entertainment. The moment it becomes too annoying to use, is the moment we stop using it. That’s how entertainment products work… or should work.
Except it’s not only entertainment. There’s tons of the useful kind of content too, including repair videos.
My working theory is that it has something do with YT trying to add ads directly in to the stream. This messes up timestamps and other metadata about the video and these clients don’t know how to deal with it yet.
In the case of Tubular (a NewPipe fork), the issue is getting code 403 (Forbidden), which prevents playing the video. It occurred sporadically while playing videos for some time but could always be fixed with a restart. Now this occurs at the very start while trying to play a video for all people at the same time. I’m strongly suspecting that this is a move aimed specifically at 3rd party players.
The same is happening with NewPipe.
