YouTube Going Dark On Older Devices

PC Mag reports on changes to the YouTube API, which have rendered YouTube apps inoperable on older consoles, smart TVs, and other video streaming devices. They're doing this because the old version of the API doesn't support some of YouTube's newer features. Newer devices might be able to upgrade — Apple handhelds that can run iOS 7 or later will have no problem, nor will 3rd-gen Apple TVs and devices running Google TV 3 or 4. But earlier Apple TVs and Google TVs running version 2 or earlier will be out of luck.

Comments

Stripped down version

[Anonymous Coward]

So offer people with older devices a version without those features.

Amazing that Google apparently thinks they have so much power in the video market that they can get away with this.

Re:Stripped down version

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing that Google apparently thinks they have so much power in the video market that they can get away with this.

Unfortunately, they can.

Re:Stripped down version

[stephanruby]

This headline makes no sense. The first version of Google TV only came out after Android was at 3.0. There is no Google TV that exists below Android 3.0.

Also, my Sony Bravia TV is pretty old (with the crappy Sony OS on it). For a while, there was a "Youtube" app and a "New Youtube" app. Now only the icon of the New Youtube app is visible (which is fine with me, the old Youtube app didn't work with my phone as well as the New Youtube app anyway).

Re:Stripped down version

[Half-pint HAL]

I've got Firefox on Linux Mint, and I don't have any Flash at all. It's pot luck which videos will even play. A lot of new ones cause a message about HTML5 video to pop up...

Re:Stripped down version

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to youtube.com/html5 and select the html5 player, it helped on my machines.

Re:Stripped down version

[gl4ss]

2.0 probably refers to second generation google tv... or whatever. not to google tv with android 2.0

Re:Stripped down version

[geekmux]

So offer people with older devices a version without those features.

Do you recall the last time you saw a "dumb" DVD or Blu-Ray player for sale that did not have "those" features?

Yeah, me neither. Seems they outlawed them.

TVs aren't far behind either, and soon neither will cars. What was a $20,000 base model that had these things called "options" has now become the $30,000 "base" model with all this in-dash/online crap standard.

After all, shouldn't everyone need to upgrade their new car/TV/appliance as often as your smartphone due to obsolescence?

Vendors think so.

Re:Stripped down version

[Viol8]

"Do you recall the last time you saw a "dumb" DVD or Blu-Ray player for sale that did not have "those" features?"

I bought a Sony blue ray player a couple of years back and half the network "apps" didn't even work out the box. Personally I didn't give a damn , I just wanted something to play spinning disks, but IMO it does show the contempt manufacturers hold their customers in these days.

Re:Stripped down version

[arbiterxero]

Yeah the problem with those features being broken is that when they update the keys on BlueRay discs, you're fucked.

You have to buy a new DVD player.

Let's say they DID work..... but sony decided not to bother updating your blueray player because it's >2 years old ....once again you're fucked.

Re:Stripped down version

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is why BluRay is, and always has been, a complete waste of time.

Re:Stripped down version

[Anonymous Coward]

Richard Stallman doesn't visit YouTube, therefore neither should you.

Re:Stripped down version

[SplatMan_DK]

Exactly.

Besides, lets be fair here. This is not something you can't fix with a $27.49 ChromeCast key ...

Re:Stripped down version

[kabili207]

It's definitely referring to the first and second generation Google TVs. I have one of the first generation Google TVs too, and I'm pretty sure YouTube will work just fine. It was updated ago to a completely redesigned, and arguably less usable, version about two or three weeks.

Re:Stripped down version

[MachineShedFred]

Good thing I have a Blu-Ray drive in my PC, and a PLEX server.

If for whatever reason my standalone Blu-Ray player stops working, that's when I plug some other class of device into that HDMI cable. I will not award a company that decides I need to buy a new thing, when the only added feature is that it's younger than the device I already have.

Re:Stripped down version

[thegarbz]

Erm no you're not. Bluray discs have keys updated constantly and the require constant updates to software players only.

The only thing that would require an update to a hardware player is a change of standard (such as moving from Bluray 1.1 to 1.2) or if the device specific key is added to a revocation list, and I can't find a single example of that happening to a hardware player so far. Plenty of software players have had their keys revoked the most high profile of which was WinDVD, but that's about it.

Re:Stripped down version

[Drethon]

My DVD player (ok it is a couple years old now) doesn't even tell me the time progress of the movie I'm watching...

Re:Stripped down version

[Barsteward]

it forces you to upgrade, so not a silly idea from their perspective

Re:Stripped down version

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly.

Besides, lets be fair here. This is not something you can't fix with a $27.49 ChromeCast key ...

Screw that -- I'm not giving Google a damn penny, especially after they nuked my BluRay player (YouTube no longer supports it as of 4/20).

Re:Stripped down version

[Half-pint HAL]

It's on already. The problem's an ideologoical one -- the Firefox team only include "open" codecs in the base install.

Re:Stripped down version

[ArmoredDragon]

it does show the contempt manufacturers hold their customers in these days.

I really don't think that's what's going on here. You've got to remember that this is the iFlock generation where if the device doesn't resemble something trendy and heartsy enough for a Japanese school girl, few people will buy it. This is because most people aren't like the geek crowd found on slashdot; they basically have this mindset that if something isn't built in, then it isn't possible to do.

Let me give you an example: About six years ago I worked at Staples, and I recall having a customer come in who said he already had a network wired printer, but he wanted to buy a new wireless printer so he could print from his laptop. It just totally never occurred to him that *any* networked printer could be used via wifi because it's likely that you at least have a layer 3 connection to it. Being non-commissioned, I simply told him this and explained (for free, and briefly) how to do that and didn't sell him a printer that day. However most sales people aren't as nice as I was when I did sales, and that's especially true of Best Buy.

Anyways many customers don't simply put two and two together that smart TV functions that you pay probably a few extra hundred for are easily replaced by a single hundred roku. Because of that lack of education, customers end up coming to the store asking for TVs that also include a kitchen sink as standard. Thus even the manufacturers that might not want to do this will have to follow suit, because the majority of purchasers aren't educated.

Re:Stripped down version

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, it's really idiotic comments like that which give AC's a bad name.

Re:Stripped down version

[Blaskowicz]

So, you have a small, semi-failing computer thing and the solution is to add another small computer thing with a different set of limitations.

It's not surprising

[msobkow]

That's what happens when you rely on a vendor instead of a ratified standard. Can you imagine the uproar if older HDTV tuners suddenly stopped working with new broadcasts? People were upset enough that the old analogue signals were obsolesced!

Re:It's not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Uproar from who? The HDTV tuner vendors? They'd sell a bunch more. Unfortunately the consumers don't really have much of a choice these days if they don't jump on the upgrade bandwagon.

Re:It's not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Older HDTV tuners WILL stop working. Its just a matter of WHEN.

Standards don't mean a damned thing because standards change. I remember when Apple dropped the floppy drive and hardware geeks rioted. Fast forward and now things are USB bootable.

Re:It's not surprising

[NotInHere]

This. All this "smart tv" nonsense is only about collecting data and, through "upgrades" like this, forcing people to only use devices which are not older than 3 years.

The EU should consider this too when they are reviewing google: google and all other tech companies should use standards. What would happen if every single railway company would have different track gauges?

Re:It's not surprising

[JaredOfEuropa]

The difference is in the "when". Broadly adopted standards do not get dropped all that quickly; in this case the content or hardware providers tend to be followers rather than leaders. Apple is a bit of an exception, they like to come up with their own standards and are a bit quicker to drop stuff they think is becoming obsolete. But where a single provider owns the standard, things tend to change a whole lot quicker. And where standards change quickly, older versions of the standard get dropped faster; it would be too expensive to maintain backward compatibility. This is what businesses are discovering in the world of SAAS (software as a service) as well, especially on multi-tenant systems. Providers like these want to remain on the leading edge and are forcing everyone to follow along, even if theirs are paying customers.

Re:It's not surprising

[ruir]

They did? Oh I did not noticed. The best they ever did was to drop the floppy and DVD drive, why carry the darn thing inside the laptop just giving you extra weight. I only actually burn DVDs to listen to music on the car...and even that will end once I buy I new one. I might see and handle a CD or DVD maybe twice in a year, has been like that for a few years now.

Re:It's not surprising

[thegarbz]

So you are saying that standards are somehow immune and then citing an example of where a standard service stopped working? There is no immunity when you're consuming content from a 3rd party. Standards have nothing to do with it what so ever. You are relying 100% on someone offering something to you in a format that they choose in the hope that the format provided is something compatible with your equipment.

Posted from a web-browser because no one supports Gopher anymore.

Re:It's not surprising

[fisted]

That's what happens when you rely on a vendor instead of a ratified standard.

A hundred times this.

Re:It's not surprising

[fisted]

Standards don't mean a damned thing because standards change

wtf? for instance?

Re:It's not surprising

[ledow]

Erm... is it just me that immediately thinks of DVB-T here? That's exactly what happened.

In the UK we were pushed to upgrade to "digital" (DVB-T). Within a few years, DVB-T2 - an incompatible standard that required hardware upgrades - was actually required to support HDTV channels, and even the "extra" channels that couldn't fit on standard DVB.

Just being a standard doesn't stop obsoletion. Wireless shows you that. Within days of actually being ratified as a standard, the next wireless standard is in the works and people start pushing our pre-N or pre-AC products.

If anything, being "standard"is something that happens after the event, not before, and when provides basis for obsoletion. "You mean you've only got a HTML-4 browser? Our website requires HTML-5. Why? Because."

This is the cost of change, evolution and rapid development. Things get left behind, even if they were good products/services. It's not even necessarily deliberate. Who the hell is going to want to risk bricking your old devices by pushing a firmware update to a device they no longer sell, running on a chip that's no longer produced, with firmware that no longer has active development, to give you features that the old hardware can't use anyway (e.g. pushing HD or new codecs into the YouTube apps?). Nobody.

Re:It's not surprising

[thetoadwarrior]

Laptops are hardly lighter just because the drive is removed. The DVD drive weight is nothing compared to the battery. While the battery is obviously more important that doesn't take away from the fact the DVD drive barely adds anything on top of that.

Re:It's not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

But all my DVB-T devices still work just fine. And when I do get an HD device it will work with all the old DVB-T channels just fine.

Channels change all the time and if a couple more home shopping or "reality" crap channels have to move to a DVB-T2 multiplex then I'm just fine with that.

Re:It's not surprising

[justthinkit]

There is also the volume a DVD drive takes up. And it is powered. With a cable that takes up space and might be needed for a different device (like an SSD).

All of these are factors on desktops as well. Lately, when I open up a machine I disconnect and remove the DVD drive. Better air flow, less power draw and less phantom drive openings (happens on two of my machines).

Re:It's not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

HTTP/0.9, HTTP/1.0, HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2.0.

Re:It's not surprising

[Viol8]

"This is the cost of change, evolution and rapid development. Things get left behind, even if they were good products/services. "

Who says its a cost we want to pay? Millennials might be happy blowing money to upgrade to the latest Ooo Shiny! tech every 2 years but some of us have more important things to spend it on. I'm not going to be some consumer sheep/fanboy upgrading all the time just to keep some corporations bank balance in the black.

Re:It's not surprising

[FlyveHest]

What do you mean if? This has happened in Denmark, when they went from analog to digital terrestrial broadcasts.

First to MPEG2, and latest to MPEG4, a lot of owners of older TVs had to purchase external boxes if they still wanted to receive the national TV signals.

Re:It's not surprising

[N!k0N]

What would happen if every single railway company would have different track gauges?

Lots and lots of trans-loading stations ... and increased costs, etc. Probably would cripple the economy (as it seems to run on cheap Chinese goods that're built to break in 3-4 years in the first place ... "They don't build 'em like they used to" and all that).

Re:It's not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

It's OK for TVs because there is a scarce amount of radio spectrum - for a new standard to come in, an old one must go. But for Youtube, this isn't nearly as relevant.

Re:It's not surprising

[AmiMoJo]

When YouTube started there was no standard for streaming video. The only working options were things like Flash and RealPlayer, so they went with Flash. Now they are moving to HTML5 and that's the problem - older devices don't support it.

The real issue is that tech companies are not used to providing software for consumer products. In the UK smart television are covered by the Sale of Goods Act. The Act says that they must last a "reasonable length of time". For a moderately priced television you would expect at least 5 years out of it, more for an expensive one. If it fails before that time you can take the vendor (not the manufacturer, the shop where you bought it) to court and argue your case, and will be entitled to compensation for lost functionality. Say the TV dies after three years, you might get 50% of the purchase price back because it only lasted half as long as you would reasonably expect it to.

Loss of functionality due to discontinuation of service is new but seems to be covered by existing conventions. If part of a product breaks and the vendor can't fix it you can get compensation. That was the basis for the £85 refund on a Playstation 3 some guy got from Amazon when Sony removed the Other OS feature.

I own a high end Panasonic plasma TV. It is the year after the ones that are being cut off, but I was worried for a while. I use YouTube every day on it. If it were to break down and stop showing YouTube, a feature I specifically wanted when I bought it, I'd go back to the shop and ask for compensation, say 30% of the purchase price. Alternatively they could offer me an alternative, like a new TV or perhaps a smart BluRay player, assuming I could add it to my system without breaking my existing set-up. I'd also settle for say £80 to cover the cost of an Amazon FireTV stick.

Re:It's not surprising

[bill_mcgonigle]

Can you imagine the uproar if older HDTV tuners suddenly stopped working with new broadcasts?

Odds are some "smart" TV's are losing YouTube, or will with the next change. By the end of their 20-year life-expectancy, most of those things will only be able to play HDTV and HDMI. The ones that aren't bricked by malicious malware by then, anyway.

There might even be some that lose functions before the warranty runs out - is the manufacturer liable for firmware updates to maintain functionality?

Google's clearly going to externalize all the costs of reacquisition and recycling - it's not established what obligations, if any, they have when they offer a product and refuse to support it for a "reasonable" time. I'm just surprised with that with a Google of money, it's not worth it to them to hire a guy to keep the old API working, so that those eyeballs don't migrate to other services. If Youtube fails and Hulu keeps working, it would be an error to assume that people will just go buy a new TV to keep up with YouTube - they will substitute other services in most cases.

Re:It's not surprising

[bill_mcgonigle]

Just being a standard doesn't stop obsoletion. Wireless shows you that. Within days of actually being ratified as a standard, the next wireless standard is in the works and people start pushing our pre-N or pre-AC products.

Yet you can still configure an -AC AP to allow -b devices to connect to it. B-only devices were last made in, what, 2001? It's limiting, and sometimes not the default, but real standards usually try to incorporate backwards-compatibility if they can.

Re:It's not surprising

[foreverdisillusioned]

This kinda-sorta happened already with HDTV early adopters. I picked up a 1080i HD CRT from Goodwill a couple years ago for $20 that had only component in, no HDMI. Whoever paid full price for the thing must have been pretty pissed after HDMI and bluray came out and the only HD content they could show was a couple of over the air DTV channels.

Re:It's not surprising

[SJ]

The difference between the Analog/Digital switch being that it was a government mandated change. Everyone knew about it for a very long time and there was a legitimate reason for the change (to free up a scarce public resource). In Australia at least, the government even offered coupons for Digital TV tuners so that existing TV's could still be used.

In this case, Google just can't be bothered supporting their old API any more. (I wouldn't be surprised if their new API forces the collection of more data or something like that).

Re:It's not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Cables that take up space? Sata cables are kind of diminutive. I might've bought a bit of that if PATA's were still around or if you're using some rather old-school SCSI drives. But...I call bullshit on your line of reasoning based on the cable angle. If you've got THAT much off into the rough, what else do you have WRONG?

Re:It's not surprising

[brunes69]

It doesn't have to be this way and it has little to do with standards. Netflix streaming today still works fine on devices that are first generation from many years ago. This is despite all of the new functions and features they have come out with since then - heck they even changed their whole DRM scheme for many players.

The main difference is YouTube has little incentive to keep supporting these old devices since they don't generate much, of any, ad revenue (heck they might not even support ads), whereas Netflix needs to support their subscribers as long as possible.

Standards don't do anything to help with this problem it has more to do with an advertising driven business model.

Re:It's not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh...this depends on your usage. They've not dropped them from all laptops (floppies got phased out, not because of the thinking you're espousing (which is, flatly, BULLSHIT- but then, this *IS* /.), but rather due to the next "standard" utterly outstripping almost any other removable storage. Why have only a floppy or Zip disk's worth of stuff when you can have 128 or more Gigs on something that can survive 1500 G's of acceleration force WHILE OPERATING?) and while YOU might not need a DVD burner...I certainly do. For me, a laptop is a professional tool instead of a personal toy. I need the ability whether it's an small, light external or an internal for this sort of thing- and I prefer internal, because it's ONE LESS THING TO FUCKING BREAK. Cables crap out. External devices get jostled about and broken- or worse, LOST.

Re:It's not surprising

[cdrudge]

In this case, Google just can't be bothered supporting their old API any more.

You get what you pay for...

Re:It's not surprising

[Ol Olsoc]

People were upset enough that the old analogue signals were obsolesced!

Yup, this. What we saw was the unholy kludge of NTSC video television, which was kept for years, so that old early 1950's TVs would still be compatible, being sacrificed. Gramma could still watch the first TV she ever bought - if it wasn't in the landfill, a victim of proton decay.

NTSC television is the counter example to all this, an illustration of what happens when you force a standard on people long past the time it should ever have been used.

Slashdotters are becoming the The Crazy Uncle of technology, you know, the guy who brags about not having an email address, and is still really pissed that they took tetraethyl lead out of gasoline. And don't get him started on that damned zip code business. They just picked a little bit later in time to demand that technology had to be frozen.

Re:It's not surprising

[cheekyboy]

I bet you Plex will write a Youtube wrapper/proxy so that html5 source url will transcode back to the old format whatever that is.

Re:It's not surprising

[Holi]

According to the Encyclopedia of American Business History and Biography, at the beginning of the Civil War, there were more than 20 different gauges ranging from 3 to 6 feet, although the 4-foot, eight-and-a-half inch was the most widely used. During the war, any supplies transported by rail had to be transferred by hand whenever a car on one gauge encountered track of another gauge and more than 4,000 miles of new track was laid during the war to standardize the process. Later, Congress decreed that the 4-foot, eight-and-a-half inch standard would be used for transcontinental railway.

Re:It's not surprising

[Ol Olsoc]

What would happen if every single railway company would have different track gauges?

Lots and lots of trans-loading stations ... and increased costs, etc. Probably would cripple the economy (as it seems to run on cheap Chinese goods that're built to break in 3-4 years in the first place ... "They don't build 'em like they used to" and all that).

By the way, in the Great War of Northern Agression in the US in the 1860's, the North, which was a bastion of socialist type controls on the people, had settled on one standard, (there were some narrow gauge railroads in use yet though) while in the less regulated South, there was apparently a lot of different approaches to railroads, resulting in a lot of unloading and reloading as shipping was a pretty complicated affair,

Re:It's not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

USB.

Re:It's not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA also offered voucher for converter boxes when switching TV signals. The spectrum was freed up for other purposes.

Re:It's not surprising

[SplatMan_DK]

Politely: "State regulation" =! "socialism" ...

Re:It's not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

What is your point? That only old grandmas watched non-digital terrestrial TV? When they made the switch I was still watching over the air analog TV. HDTVs were still expensive then for someone like me who didn't have two dimes to rub together. My analog TV was free (hand me down). I think the switch was a few years too early (but should be done none-the-less) but I was happy I got a free converter box, thought that was a fair trade off. I moved right afterwards though and was never able to pick up any over the air TV signals after that (lived too far away).

Re:It's not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Now they are moving to HTML5 and that's the problem - older devices don't support it.

I can see why you might think that, but it's absolutely not the problem.

My three dead youtube apps were on devices that never supported Flash. VierraCast is all Java. Google could have continued to support it but chose not to. I understand that there's a cost to testing older devices and that we don't collectively want to force Google to pay that price.

I also understand that there's a cost to replacing otherwise-functional devices and also an environmental cost for discarding them.

This is a bogus move on Google's part. They don't want to fund QA, so the world must bear the burden of an unnecessary upgrade and discard cycle.

Re:It's not surprising

[ArcadeMan]

There's no such thing as "HTML5" video. It's H.264 and it's a standard.

Re:It's not surprising

[MachineShedFred]

Not so much lighter, but thinner.

All those motors, plus the space for the disk and it's insert / extract mechanism are big in comparison to the total volume of today's notebooks.

The days of optical media are over except for archival purposes. I've been living there for about 3 years now - all my video is streamed on my network from a FreeBSD box. All my software installs are on that same FreeBSD box as installers in folders, or disk images. All CDs, DVDs, and Blu-Ray discs have been ripped and are sitting in a cardboard box in a storage room under the stairs. I used to keep Blu-Ray handy for the lossless audio, but I got that working out of MKV files too; into storage they go.

Re:It's not surprising

[jratcliffe]

I'd also settle for say £80 to cover the cost of an Amazon FireTV stick.

You'd want 80 quid for something Amazon will sell you today for 35?

Re:It's not surprising

[drinkypoo]

I own a high end Panasonic plasma TV. It is the year after the ones that are being cut off, but I was worried for a while. I use YouTube every day on it. If it were to break down and stop showing YouTube, a feature I specifically wanted when I bought it, I'd go back to the shop and ask for compensation, say 30% of the purchase price.

And if you had bought a TV without that nonsense inside of it, and got that functionality in a separate device, then if you did wind up having to exchange it, that would be a lot less hassle. Even in countries where there are effective consumer protection laws, smart TVs are still dumb.

Re:It's not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

That has already happened. The first generation of hdtv tuners only supported up to 1080p using the mpeg2 format. After a few years they started switching over to mpeg4 formats making these tuners obsolete. Also first generation of hdtv tuners for satellite only supported dvb-s while now there is a new standard called dvb-s2 that allows more bandwidth per transponder so any channels using those can no longer be recieved with the older ones.

Re:It's not surprising

[AmiMoJo]

The smart functions are great when they work. For a long time I didn't bother using XMBC any more because the TV's built in network media player was more than adequate. The YouTube, iPlayer and Netflix apps are very useful to have too, and getting a third party device wouldn't guarantee that they keep working either. iPlayer and Netflix use DRM so open source players periodically break.

Basically you are screwed no matter what, but at least we can punish companies that screw us financially. Money is the only language that they understand.

Re:It's not surprising

[AmiMoJo]

It's £80: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Amazon...

Where can I get one for £35?

Re:It's not surprising

[operagost]

Yup, this. What we saw was the unholy kludge of NTSC video television, which was kept for years, so that old early 1950's TVs would still be compatible, being sacrificed.

No, NTSC color was implemented the way it was so that the B&W 1950s and 60s TVs of, you know, last YEAR could be kept. Then we held off on digital because the color TVs of the 70s, 80s, and 90s would be useless without a digital tuner box and a brand new antenna, which the former ended up being paid for through taxes... which was a complete waste, because a digital tuner is nearly useless without the new antenna. You get like two channels.

Re:It's not surprising

[tlhIngan]

When YouTube started there was no standard for streaming video. The only working options were things like Flash and RealPlayer, so they went with Flash. Now they are moving to HTML5 and that's the problem - older devices don't support it.

No, the problem is not Flash or HTML5.

The problem is that the old YouTube players were much better than the current one, because well, they didn't support ads.

The new YouTube apps support the Google APIs and they return ads, both the pop up and interstitials, while the old APIs didn't support it.

Back when YouTube was in the old days of getting marketshare, and API use is low, it made sense. These days, with Google monetizing stuff, well, they need all youtube players to support ads.

Re:It's not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Also browsers that once played HTML5 video fine now all of a sudden have a problem. Obviously there is a standard but Google wants to force some additional tracking feature that the older version didnt support.

Re:It's not surprising

[Ol Olsoc]

Politely: "State regulation" =! "socialism" ...

Well, I'm glad it was politely! I was being a little bit sarcastic in anticipation of the regulations iz all evil crowd chiming in. I agree that some regulation is simply needed in a modern society, or else we'll have weird stuff like people selling mortgages to people who should never ever have them. Fortunately, that'll never happen.

One of the biggest problems the south had was their immense distrust of government, and belief that lack of governance = good outcome.

We still see a lot of that today, and people who do actually think that most any form of regulation is socialism, or communism, or the guvmint tellng them what to do.

Re:It's not surprising

[jbolden]

Certainly forced obsolescence is a fair criticism of single vendor. But let's use your analogy of HDTV

In 1936 the British invented the first HDTV, followed by a French model 1in 1949 and a Soviet model in 1958
In 1964 NHK decided to start producing HDTV televisions and broadcasts. They had those going by 1972
During the 1970s several other vendors in other countries got involved
In 1979 the Higher definition study group was created
In 1981 the first USA manufacturer got involved
In 1983 the 1979 was rewritten to include some digital technology
In 1993 the first HDTV broadcast in the USA took place
In 1994 there was field testing in almost 200 sites
In 1996 the first HDTV station came online
In 1998 the first national (coast to coast) HDTV broadcast happened
etc...

Notice the staggering speed of working with standards rather than a single vendor?

Re:It's not surprising

[Ol Olsoc]

What is your point? That only old grandmas watched non-digital terrestrial TV?.

My point is that once upon a time, slashdotters were interested in technology. Now all too many think it is the enemy.

Re:It's not surprising

[jratcliffe]

It's right there on the front page of amazon.co.uk, FireTV Stick the Most Powerful Streaming Media Stick" 35 pounds.

Try this link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/pro...

Re:It's not surprising

[jratcliffe]

That's the FireTV _box_, not the stick. The Stick is 35 pounds. You give up the voice remote and a bit of processing horsepower, but unless you really want to use it for gaming, it shouldn't make a difference.

Re:It's not surprising

[sexconker]

When YouTube started there was no standard for streaming video.

Horsehist. It was trivial to embed a stream and use NetShow (later renamed to Windows Media Server) to serve it up, a decade before fucking Youtube.
I remember watching entire episodes of ZDTV shows this way because they loaded the entire episode but merely changed the cut in and cut out times to serve up clips.

The requisite "standard" was nothing more than having an installed media player capable of reading ASF files and fetching the stream. If you wanted it in the web page, your browser just needed to handle the embed tag. The only thing modern "standards" do is require the browser to do the work yet they still leave the critical piece - codecs - up in the air.

Re:It's not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what towers are for, not laptops.

Re:It's not surprising

[Mister Transistor]

Actually, this sort of happened with NetFlix too. The older WDTV Live Plus box I have has a NetFlix app in it, but they changed their "standards" and the older app doesn't recognize family member segmentation. The newer NetFlix apps ask who is watching so it can keep stats and faves for each family member, the older app did not support this. If I use the older app, anything I watch will affect the tracking for other users in my family. Fortunately, the problem is just an annoyance at worst, since after the "upgrade" it still will play videos. This is good, they didn't completely break compatibility so that the older apps will at least still play, but without the new "tracking" feature(s).

Re:It's not surprising

[Mister Transistor]

Maybe they are just getting tired of endless upgrade-treadmill running for nearly zero gain in benefits or features. Technology is still interesting, but as we get older we see the "dark side" of technological improvements, including a whole new world of ways corps can fuck people over.

Re:It's not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

I own both. The Box is significantly more responsive than the Stick in terms of its UI, application launching and starting video playback. It also includes a full range of inputs, most importantly including ethernet. The Stick is definitely functional but the Box is probably the Cadillac of mainstream STBs.

Re:It's not surprising

[serbanp]

Unless you wanted to settle for a lower performance display, you could not find a Plasma TV from Panasonic (the Cadillac of all TVs) without "smart" features. Even today, almost two years since they stopped making them, these TVs run circles around the current crop of LCD-based ones. Therefore, no, the "smart" features were not optional...

Re:It's not surprising

[Ol Olsoc]

Maybe they are just getting tired of endless upgrade-treadmill running for nearly zero gain in benefits or features. Technology is still interesting, but as we get older we see the "dark side" of technological improvements, including a whole new world of ways corps can fuck people over.

As cute as that sounds, I'm sitting here enjoying the NHL playoffs in high-def, and enjoying a very clean signal.

Watching television on a old school set is simply awful. And as a 3-D animator (just one part of my job) HD is a Godsend. There were not many things as depressing as the old frame buffer days, when you converted your nice sharp 3-D animations to NTSC then on to tape.

Missing those days is like missing lead paint in your kid's bedroom.

But let me ask, was there some point in time when technology wasn't used for dark purposes? Is there something special about today's technology thyat makes it so awful that instead of seeing the good, a normal person could only look at every new thing, and they only see the bad?

Now, the question then becomes, "Where do we stop at with regards to technology, and how will that stopping make life better?"

The Internet?

Rocketry?

Airplanes?

Medicine?

Electronics

Automobiles?

Trains?

Horses"

Agriculture?

Houses?

All technology can be used for ill as well as good. But when you start to sound like the boys down at the Legion bitching about how awful everything is now, you can rest assured you have just slipped into the past along with all that good/better stuff you lament. I've heard that carping outlook, and it is pure poison.

Congratulations olde-tymer! You made it. Maybe they have one of those old TV's you like at the rest home.

Re:It's not surprising

[Mister Transistor]

Not trying to be cute. Nor am I an aging technophobe, but what I said is very true, most new technologies are created with the purest and best intentions, but quickly or occasionally over time, people think of ways to pervert them and use them for their own gain rather than the good for which they were intended.

I'm definitely not looking backward nor pining for the past. Your assumption about me is 100% wrong. However, in 50+ years on the planet I have seen many things heralded as great inventions which devolve into negative things. Television, your first great example, was supposed to be used for educational purposes. Look at it now, idiotic reality shows, moronic sitcoms, mostly garbage and pap intended to keep the drooling masses mesmerized so they don't notice how the rest of the world is turning to shit.

Same thing with a lot of your other examples. The Internet? Also meant for educational and research purposes. Now we have Youtube. Rocketry? Meant for entertainment (fireworks). Then it became a weapon. Same with airplanes, they were meant to deliver people and mail, but now they drop bombs. I could go on but you get my point, I hope.

I have hopes that some things may get better eventually, some have. Most have not.

I can assure you that I am not ready for the Legion quite yet, thank you. Not everything is more awful than it was, and if you think that attitude is poison, then what you do suggest is the right one as you see things going down the toilet? Obstinate complacency and a laissez-faire attitude is the poison. If you ignore the problems, things left to themselves just get worse. Hence we have the current state of affairs we find ourselves in today. Thank you for that.

Oh, and some day you'll be walking with a cane and shitting yourself in public. Until then, get the fuck off my lawn, whippersnapper.

Re:It's not surprising

[ruir]

Maybe you are both wrong. I have 10Gbps Internet at work, and 100Mbps at home. I have everything in my NAS - cannot remember last time I used a pen, much less a DVD.

Expected lifetime 3 years.

[Anonymous Coward]

So now even my television set has an expected lifetime of less then 3 years?

Never rely on google anymore.

WRONG!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what happens when one uses a Teh G thing. If Teh G were a person it would have been committed a long, long, long, LONG time ago. And like the insanity that is Teh G, people forget and just keep repeating the same old thing.

BUY MORE SHIT!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Growing up I remember 50s and 60s TVs still working into the 00s (until the new digital transmission I get) and 20s-30s still working.

WTF is it with this generation of companies that they expect me to replace big-ticket items after 18 months? Especially in this case, I'm sure it has nothing to do with the core functionality itself, just features that maybe 2% of people use or for Googletube to push it's increasingly heavier amount of ads (yeah, I know, "Skip Ad", we both know that's going away as soon as they got the audience to accept ads at all).

Re:BUY MORE SHIT!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought my (cheap) TV 4 years ago and have no need to upgrade at the moment. It does not support Freeview HD but I can buy a £30 tuner which would also add recording and boom. Freeview HD.

I also had a 15 years old TV until a few months ago that worked just fine. Sure I had to plug it into the (at the time) £20 Freeview tuner on switchover day but it still vomited pictures into my eye holes.

So yeah I had to "buy more shit" in this case a £20 thingie "replace big-ticket items after 18 months" is not the case. The shit Google is playing here is shitty and hopefully will hurt google (it has put me off buying a ChromeCast) but it is not the end of the world, must replace everything every 18 months.

Re:BUY MORE SHIT!!!!!!

[k6mfw]

it is all a large conspiracy to get people on the upgrade to upgrade to be ready for the next upgrade. kind of makes one feels like this,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
and probably need the new Youtube upgrade to watch this!

Re:Expected lifetime 3 years.

[geekmux]

So now even my television set has an expected lifetime of less then 3 years?

Yes. Along with your car that came with all those fancy in-dash electronic systems standard that are now obsolete.

Along with your DVD and Blu-Ray players. They're all so "smart" these days too.

Never rely on google anymore.

Yes, because they're the only vendor in the game...Riiiight.

Good luck narrowing down the manufacturer to blame when IoT takes over. You think obsolescence is bad now..

Re:BUY MORE

[ledow]

I don't know if you've noticed but today's generation just ignores ads. I work in schools - the pupils do not see anywhere near as many ads as I did when I was a child. TV ads are dead - they are background noise. We've trained children to ignore all ads in games and online. Streaming services mean that ads have to be forced and - inevitably - the kids find a way to download without ads anyway.

I bet you could hum the tune to several hundreds ads if you went through one of those websites that shows you old ads from your country. The kids today? Probably only the extreme ones.

The more you force ads, the more you force people to ignore them if they can't bypass them. It's counter-productive.

Honestly, I think it's more to do with legacy code. Who has the code to some 10 year old early "smart" TV that ran on a custom chip that's not non-standard and unavailable, and so who's going to do the development and testing to push newer formats, HD, etc. down to that TV's firmware.

In my house alone, I have YouTube apps on several phones, a tablet, a cable box, an older cable box, a DVD player, a Blu-Ray player, a cheap DVB-S box, the original Wii, etc. To update all of those to newer formats, HD quality, etc. may not even be technically possible (which just generates more exceptions and differences in the codebase), plus any licensing, plus the risk of breaking the device, plus liaising with all the manufacturer's (most of whom just won't care as they're not selling that model any more), etc. It's just an enormous upheaval for zero gain.

And it's not just YouTube. BBC iPlayer suffers the same fate - all the above devices have BBC iPlayer apps on them too and some of those no longer work because it would need some cheap Chinese manufacturer to bother to develop, test and push a new firmware for a device they no longer sell (or, even if they do, represents a tiny portion of their sales in only a particular country). Just the risk of bricking something isn't worth the hassle of trying to update it.

We are certainly breeding a throw-away culture of technology because of this, yes, but that's not "enforced" so much as inevitable. A £20 DVD player with network connectivity and an iPlayer/YouTube app on it - if the app on that stops working? Who cares?

Just the development time alone to push out even the tiniest of working updates for devices like that is enormous. You might even find that the original development team, or even company, doesn't exist any more. Will consumers notice? Not really. They have ten devices that can do the same and they won't be turning on the DVD player to watch YouTube when they can ChromeCast it from their phone or whatever nowadays.

It's obsolescence but not necessarily deliberate and malicious obsolescence. Just necessity.

Re:Expected lifetime 3 years.

[a.koepke]

And this is why I never bothered with a SmartTV. Aside from the HD TV tuner, I prefer my TV to be just a monitor. Give me ports and let me plug in other devices which provide smart functionality like a Raspberry Pi or Chromecast or console, etc.

I watch YouTube on my TV. Find the video via the Android App, share it with the Kodi remote app and it starts playing on my TV. Easy.

bad news

[Anonymous Coward]

I have ipad2 with ios6 and really don't want to upgrade, because ios8 drains the battery a lot of faster.

Re:bad news

[Wild_dog!]

Does it? I haven't notice on our kids iPad2.
Battery life seems fine.

Re:Please help me

[Anonymous Coward]

From the nubile girl store. You can rent, or you can buy. I would recommend rental, if it's your first time.

I only use the website for search anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

I use youtube-dl because VLC is a far better player.

Re:BUY MORE

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, I think it's more to do with legacy code. Who has the code to some 10 year old early "smart" TV that ran on a custom chip that's not non-standard and unavailable, and so who's going to do the development and testing to push newer formats, HD, etc. down to that TV's firmware.

That's what HTTP Accept headers are for, e.g.:
Accept: video/mpeg;audio=mp3;channels=2;q=0.3, video/x-mpeg2;audio=mp3;channels=2;q=0.6 video/mp4;audio=avc;channels=5.1

I sense more regulatory woes coming.

[BarbaraHudson]

Google is already in trouble with the EU. This latest tactic is the sort of stuff that even a convicted monopolist like Microsoft wouldn't pull because it would justifiably piss off a lot of their customers. So why does Google do it? Because it proves once again the people who use google services aren't their "customers". Google is an advertising business. You're just eyeballs that google sells to their customers.

Re:Expected lifetime 3 years.

[info6568]

Yes ... instead of using the $$$$ in the "smart" part of the TV, look for a better TV (bigger, faster, with better image) without the smart part and purchase a TV stick (miniPC, raspberry or even the chromecast) that would cost you less than $100 with an upgradeable smart part.
And when you perform several "upgrades" and the stick won't accept more updates in several years, possible more time that the smart TVs themselves, you won't feel bad discarding the stick instead of the complete TV set.

Might write a API2 to API2 proxy

[cheekyboy]

Screw you google.

Time to write a youtube proxy ,that will allow old devices to talk to new youtube.

And we will strip you of ads too, and show a still frame of the ad, with no audio, while the proxy will still stream the ad from the source, the end device will not see it.

HAHA.

Re:Might write a API2 to API2 proxy

[AsmCoder8088]

Excellent idea, but why even show a still frame of the ad? Show some cute pictures of cats or something more interesting while the advertisement is being blocked.

Re:Might write a API2 to API2 proxy

[alantus]

Excellent idea, but why even show a still frame of the ad? Show some cute pictures of cats or something more interesting while the advertisement is being blocked.

Here's a business opportunity:

Basic package: pics of cats
Gold package: pics of chicks
Free customer: goat.cx

Re:Might write a API2 to API2 proxy

[AsmCoder8088]

thanks for that, you owe me a new keyboard!

Buy a DVD caddy to SSD adaptor dude

[cheekyboy]

Then you can put 2 SSDs in your laptop.

Better than one.

Re:Buy a DVD caddy to SSD adaptor dude

[Holi]

And that is why I like laptops with dvd drives.

Hmm

[koan]

Which is why I bought a huge LCD screen that was just a screen, not "smart" at all.
The computer tied to the end of it is cheap and easily replaceable.

Obsolete smart TV's?

[Wild_dog!]

Don't think I will be buying a TV for Smart features anymore.
The features will all become obsolete
I will just get something like Roku or other devices that will keep pace with the time.

Re:Obsolete smart TV's?

[acoustix]

Don't think I will be buying a TV for Smart features anymore.
The features will all become obsolete

Yeah, it definitely makes a person think before making the next purchase. I would expect most of the "smart" features on my Samsung TVs to work for the life of the unit.

Re:Obsolete smart TV's?

[Wild_dog!]

Seems like what started out as the smart TV revolution will now be turning into tech cycle obsolescence

Re:Obsolete smart TV's?

[Overzeetop]

Yeah, I made that mistake. Never again. And it has nothing to do with being obsolete.

The difference between Panasonic's "Smart TV" apps and the cheapest plug in sticks (FireTV/Chrome) or puck STBs is absolute night and day in terms of functionality and responsiveness. We've given up on the embedded apps entirely because they're so slow and buggy.

Re:Obsolete smart TV's?

[Wild_dog!]

So in the end... this is probably a great thing. No more delusions of the continued functioning of smart TV's for the life of the TV.
Personally, I have always wanted just a really great panel without all the bells and whistles. We don't watch TV much but do sling things to it from the computer, phones and puck devices. I find all of the remotes these days have a billion buttons. I end up inadvertently pressing something and get stuck on settings I can't get out of. Very Very annoying.

Atari

[Wild_dog!]

Still mad I could never get Youtube working on my Atari 800.
Now this!!!!

What features? Try ADS...

[Anonymous Coward]

More like they can't push in-app commercials to any of the older versions so they're killing them off.

Re:Expected lifetime 3 years.

[thegarbz]

And this is why I never bothered with a SmartTV.

What makes you think the modern dumb TV will last any longer?

We apparently have a smart TV. I don't know exactly I've never actually pushed the button that starts the supposed smart bit, but to me the smarts in a TV is like a centre console in the car. It's just part of some cars, I never use it, and I couldn't care less if the car has it or not.

Re:Expected lifetime 3 years.

[MachineShedFred]

Exactly. My TV came with a little USB WiFi thing that I absolutely did not plug in, and "apps" for YouTube, NetFlix, Pandora which I have never used. Now the YouTube one is likely broken, and while that makes me slightly annoyed it was also the world's most predictable occurrence of something being made obsolete.

I'll continue using YouTube on my laptop or my tablet where the experience isn't atrocious (I can TYPE on them), NetFlix and Amazon Video from the media PC stashed in the cabinet that also serves as DVR and PLEX client, and not using Pandora at all.

If I could have bought the TV without that useless crap, I would have. But apparently all the manufacturers felt they needed to add it to compete with each other once one of them added it. Somehow I doubt we'll be seeing a wave of firmware updates for all these devices in order to bend to Google's wishes?

Re:Expected lifetime 3 years.

[Holi]

>Yes, because they're the only vendor in the game...Riiiight. Umm, if you want to watch YouTube, then yes they are.

Re:Expected lifetime 3 years.

[Binestar]

I'll continue using YouTube on my laptop or my tablet where the experience isn't atrocious (I can TYPE on them), NetFlix and Amazon Video from the media PC stashed in the cabinet that also serves as DVR and PLEX client, and not using Pandora at all.

Not that it matters, but I've found the youtube app on things like the apple TV and roku to be quite good when integrated with your youtube account. You login to the account on both devices (one time login for the TV app) and then the youtube app on your phone or youtube itself on your computer detects that there is a TV linked the the account and will actually give you the option to throw the youtube video you're watching to the TV for viewing. My father uses this feature with his tablet, finding and queuing what he wants to watch on his tablet, then just hitting a button and it pops up on his TV.

Re:Expected lifetime 3 years.

[Overzeetop]

If only it were solely Google. My 3 year old Apple tablet is not only obsolete, but has been for more than a year. No upgrades, no fixes, no revisions.

hardware obsolescence

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an old Samsung android tablet. I forgot the model but it is about two or three years old. The tablet has 4 cores running at about 1 GHz. I was able to upgrade the operating system to version 5. Even after upgrading the operating system, my tablet has difficulty rendering complex HTML pages and viewing videos. Viewing desktop versions HTML pages that include videos that play videos guarantees the browser to freeze. I can watch videos using the YouTube app without any problems.

Re:Expected lifetime 3 years.

[Karlt1]

If only it were solely Google. My 3 year old Apple tablet is not only obsolete, but has been for more than a year. No upgrades, no fixes, no revisions.

The only Apple tablet that doesn't get any updates is the original iPad introduced in March of 2010 and discontinued in March 2011 -- over four years old.

Re:BUY MORE

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if you've noticed but today's generation just ignores ads. I work in schools - the pupils do not see anywhere near as many ads as I did when I was a child. TV ads are dead - they are background noise. We've trained children to ignore all ads in games and online.

Actually, this is a sort of scary thing. If you're ignoring ads, but they are still playing in the background, they become a sort of subliminal influence over you. You'll buy a particular brand of something, but you don't really know why... and the why stops mattering.

This is *exactly* the kind of situation the advertisers want.

This sucks for me

[Control-Z]

I have an older Roku with an unofficial YouTube client on it. It's not heavy on features but it allows searching and is fast and simple, and has no ads (that is probably why Google is changing things!)

I have a Roku 3 and the YouTube client on there is awful, it's slow and cumbersome and worst of all it keeps autoplaying videos after the one you're watching finishes, with absolutely no way to turn that off. No doubt it is to display more ads for those that accidentally leave YouTube running, but if I was an advertiser that little trick wouldn't make me happy.

For now I'm sticking with my old Roku, but I know the days are numbered.

Re:Expected lifetime 3 years.

[Anonymous Coward]

>So now even my television set has an expected lifetime of less then 3 years?

Why not get your shitty OEM to update your shitty Dumb TV?

Re:Expected lifetime 3 years.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. So my dad buys an iPad around Feb. 2011 as a birthday gift for my mom, and ~18 months later they release a new iOS (6) that won't work on it. The instant an app she wants to use requires iOS 6, she's screwed. And that happened not long after iOS 7 came out a year later. So less than three years after it was sold to her at full retail, it's essentially a paperweight. That sort of thing works with phones where people get subsidized upgrades every two years anyway, but it's not going to fly for a general computing device that costs $700. Think he's going to buy her a new iPad? Hell no.

there WAS a standard

[dltaylor]

RTP/RTSP (RCFCs http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1889.txt 1889 and https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2326 2326, respectively) have been around since the 1990s, while youtube didn't come around until this century.

Re:OSS to the rescue!

[ruir]

Why should they work for free to you? Open source is about people having their needs and filling them up, not free slaves. Anyway, if open source was about talking BS, and douchebaggery you would be bigger than linus himself.

Yep, ran into that one myself

[Trax3001BBS]

I have a Panasonic Plasma HDTV, one of it's features is being able to watch Youtube. This month there has been an over lay on the Youtube screen that as of April 30th it will no longer be available. Checking it now says Youtube app was terminated April 20, 2015. clicking on it says Google no longer supports the YouTube app on this device and gives a link of youtube.com\devicesupport for more information. No I haven't visited the site.

Youtube was a nice addition, lots of full length movies.

When you use Google for everything

[MrJones]

When you use Google for everything, then your only option is to obey Google. Thanks God Google only sells ads, wait a minute ...

iPad 1

[Ritchie70]

I actually found out about it this morning, when my almost-three-year-old handed me my old iPad 1 and said "Daddy, it's broken."

Fortunately, it was just playing the "it's going to break soon" video and I got her back to her Sesame Street videos, but in a week or so I'm going to have a very angry little girl on my hands.

The darn thing was last sold in 1Q2011, so I get that it's 4-year-old technology, but gee. That doesn't seem that old.