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Soldato
Joined
30 Oct 2008
Posts
3,148
Location
South
I've been a YTP customer for a few years now as I get it through Vodafone.

I hadn't realised how bad their ad's had become until I went round a friends recently who wanted to show me some stuff on YT, the ad's on his account drove me mad! I certainly couldn't go back to that!
 
Soldato
Joined
12 Jul 2007
Posts
7,922
Location
Stoke/Norfolk
I hadn't realised how bad their ad's had become until I went round a friends recently who wanted to show me some stuff on YT, the ad's on his account drove me mad! I certainly couldn't go back to that!

And if you want a really horrific experience, log out of YT, clear all cookies and then try to use YT "raw" without logging in i.e before the algorithm figures out what you like - Holy Poop! What YT "raw" feeds people is utter trash, with it mostly being random 30yo's playing dumb pranks, MrBeast, KSI, and anything "game" related. It's like its all supposed to be aimed at <16yo's irrespective of the viewers age but in reality its more likely <10yo's from my experience of having just spent a week helping out with my mates 8yo son who is a YT "fanatic", over the school holidays.
 
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Man of Honour
Joined
13 Oct 2006
Posts
91,225
Am I the only one where YT has gone to **** over the last few months? more often than not I'm getting weird stalls in the player even with good buffer health, weird buffer activity i.e. it will buffer way on ahead then suddenly drop back to 1-2 seconds ahead with the buffer length constantly flicking up and down, times where the video won't play beyond a certain point until I reload the page regardless of how much is buffered, instances where it glitches and just skips ahead ~10 seconds, etc. often reloading the page makes the problems go away on a particular video at least for awhile which suggests it is somewhat related to what server you are getting data from.

It is happening over all my devices and no matter what connection I'm on or whether I'm logged in or using private browsing, etc. etc. the only difference is what browser I use - Chrome tends to just momentarily flash up a corrupt frame and then continue, whereas Firefox has all the issues above and Edge if somewhere in between but usually closer to Chrome in behaviour. Need to remember to ask family if they are experiencing similar and/or if that happens for them when using my connection(s).
 
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Associate
Joined
20 Aug 2020
Posts
2,038
Location
South Wales
YT has been ok for me, don't use YT that much on the iPhone or iPad but if I use the native app or safari browser it's been fine. As for the PC on Chrome I haven't noticed any issues myself and I stream a hell of a lot of YT, once the video starts it runs fine without pauses, stalls or stutters up to 8K, even if I pause it and resume it hours or a day later. I'm still using YT Premium, uBlock and my router DNS is setup to go through NextDNS which does some ad blocking as well.

This is all on WiFi even the PC (connected via AX speeds 2.4Gbps) with Virgin Media (1Gbps connection) but using my own router, a Netgear RAX200.
 
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Man of Honour
Joined
13 Oct 2006
Posts
91,225
One I've not seen before on Firefox - just loaded a video up and every scene change it would hang for half a second on a corrupt frame, reloaded the page and it played fine.

I'm currently on 4G which isn't the best thing ever for streaming stability - but no indication of buffering problems, the connection has plenty of bandwidth and no issues with latency, packetloss or disconnections:


In the past I've tried other connections though - we also have FTTC here as well as other 4G and WiFi options.
 
Associate
Joined
8 Jun 2007
Posts
1,821
Well tried Argentina but failed payment method even after having an address in Buenos Aires :cry:
Shame as it was only 80p a month.I've ended up in Ukraine for £2 a month with a Revolut virtual card and used Urban VPN.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
8,126
Location
The Land of Roundabouts
must be doing something wrong as each time i try i get the error "This purchase requires a payment method from your billing country." this is for both hsbc and Revolut, no matter the vpn to Ukraine, any ideas?
firefox and ubock is ok to use on mobile but the app is handy to use and i dont mind paying something towards it but full rrp is a rip off.
 
Associate
Joined
8 Jun 2007
Posts
1,821
must be doing something wrong as each time i try i get the error "This purchase requires a payment method from your billing country." this is for both hsbc and Revolut, no matter the vpn to Ukraine, any ideas?
firefox and ubock is ok to use on mobile but the app is handy to use and i dont mind paying something towards it but full rrp is a rip off.
I got that message too on my laptop browser so did it on my mobile using Urban VPN and it went through ok.
 
Soldato
Joined
16 Aug 2009
Posts
7,750
Am I the only one where YT has gone to **** over the last few months? more often than not I'm getting weird stalls in the player even with good buffer health, weird buffer activity i.e. it will buffer way on ahead then suddenly drop back to 1-2 seconds ahead with the buffer length constantly flicking up and down, times where the video won't play beyond a certain point until I reload the page regardless of how much is buffered, instances where it glitches and just skips ahead ~10 seconds, etc. often reloading the page makes the problems go away on a particular video at least for awhile which suggests it is somewhat related to what server you are getting data from.

It is happening over all my devices and no matter what connection I'm on or whether I'm logged in or using private browsing, etc. etc. the only difference is what browser I use - Chrome tends to just momentarily flash up a corrupt frame and then continue, whereas Firefox has all the issues above and Edge if somewhere in between but usually closer to Chrome in behaviour. Need to remember to ask family if they are experiencing similar and/or if that happens for them when using my connection(s).
No not really Waterfox is fine and so is the TV sounds like a connection issue maybe
 
Man of Honour
Joined
13 Oct 2006
Posts
91,225
No not really Waterfox is fine and so is the TV sounds like a connection issue maybe

Does it on my BT FTTC, EE 4G and Vodafone 4G so I don't think it is a connection problem unless something on the LAN side, but it is weird.

EDIT: Also comes and goes, last couple of days been fine, after being a pain Tuesday/Wednesday.
 
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Soldato
Joined
12 Jul 2007
Posts
7,922
Location
Stoke/Norfolk
Am I the only one where YT has gone to **** over the last few months? more often than not I'm getting weird stalls in the player even with good buffer health, weird buffer activity i.e. it will buffer way on ahead then suddenly drop back to 1-2 seconds ahead with the buffer length constantly flicking up and down, times where the video won't play beyond a certain point until I reload the page regardless of how much is buffered, instances where it glitches and just skips ahead ~10 seconds, etc. often reloading the page makes the problems go away on a particular video at least for awhile which suggests it is somewhat related to what server you are getting data from.

I'm using Firefox with uBlock Origin & Ghostery and have the same issues occasionally. As I mentioned previously, the fix for this 95% of the time is -

The "fix" is to drop quality to 720p etc for a few seconds then go back to 1080p/4k etc which seems to restart the stream properly. Not much of a faff overall but still a huge annoyance!

It doesn't work for any broken "Shorts" as you can't change the stream quality with those but it works for 95% of videos. For those that it doesn't, a refresh of the page cures it, as annoying as that is.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
13 Oct 2006
Posts
91,225
I'm using Firefox with uBlock Origin & Ghostery and have the same issues occasionally. As I mentioned previously, the fix for this 95% of the time is -



It doesn't work for any broken "Shorts" as you can't change the stream quality with those but it works for 95% of videos. For those that it doesn't, a refresh of the page cures it, as annoying as that is.

Yeah just a bit of a faff - it is intermittent and seems to have started with their efforts to try and defeat ad blocking (which I generally don't do on YT within reason).
 
Soldato
Joined
17 Jan 2011
Posts
8,990
Location
the King's city
Forgot my annual membership was due to expire, had no reminder about it.

Last year I switched from India to Turkey without issue.

Just tried renewing and all I got is a message from YT saying "We couldn't verify your country. Please visit the Help Centre for more information."

Only thing I have changed since last year is my VPN which is now surf shark.

Any ideas?
 
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