Interested to note the problems some have been having on older platforms with Youtube of late.
I have a Gen 3 WDTV LSMP with the latest firmware (God help me!) and have noticed that although Youtube continues to work it has been getting a little flaky at times in two areas:
a) when u initially play a vid, the revolving progress circle really flicks around and around rather than rotate smoothly. Then the video appears and it will be as fuzzy as TV in the 1950s! Eventually this clears to a sharp image. Turning on the diagnostics u can see the bit rate starts down at 500K then ramps up over 30s or so to 4 or 5Mbps, likewise the image resolution kicks up from ~350 to the eventual full 720 lines of the clip (mp4 encoded streams). Move to a new video and it does it again. Something odd going on in the speed/stream type negotiation.
b) after playing a video off, say the subscriptions list, the player fails to show any thumbnails in list on screen again. If u press up and down it redisplays fine.
This used to all work, with current box, firmware and router, ISP connection. Connectivety hasn’t changed (wifi N thru to an ISP speed of 30Mbps).
So in their fiddling with protocols have Google slightly bust the protocol they say they still support for WD TVLS? Maybe it just happens on UK servers? I did report via Youtube feeback form using an email, but nothing come back to me.
NOTE: this happens after a cold boot (ie as much memory available as possible, less that used for Media Library etc of course).
The bug could easily be in Google Youtube server land. Which was why I was asking if others had seen this new behaviour.
Google have form on this point because for months my Android tablet’s Youtube app would block after showing an advert showing the last few secons remaining but not move on to showing the video u wanted. This behaviour vanished at some point. Whether this was a Youtube app update or a fix to their servers will never be known.
How the Internt continues to work with such a Tower of Bable of poorly implemented and tested arcane and add hock standards amazes me on a daily basis. So when it doesn’t work in some corner or other, I guess I shouldnt be surprised! :manlol:
it seems to play videos at their full bit rate and their full 720x1280 resolution from the begining!
FIXED
So it was Google fiddling around with something on their servers. Who knew the interface could change that much from configuration data sent back up the connection when the app starts. I saw something similar briefly on BBC’s iPlayer app last year though. Distributed software is… great but apportioning the blame when it fails is time to bring in the lawyers if u can’t debug it yourself.
I presume that no UI configuration changes are gonna fix the memory leakes in the app as other apps and core behaviour leak too. If only…
