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Author Topic: YouTube support seems very minimal and not very usefull.  (Read 1866 times)

BartMan01

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YouTube support seems very minimal and not very usefull.
« on: October 28, 2014, 02:34:10 pm »

Just checked out YouTube in MC TheaterView for really the first time and it is pretty sparse.  The only options are 'Search', 'Popular Today', 'Popular All-Time', 'Movie Trailers', 'Music Videos', 'Fail' (full of stuff I DO NOT want anywhere near my setup), and 'Your Subscriptions'.

There does not appear to be a way to configure anything, playlists and channels are no where to be found, and the 'Your Subscriptions' section seems like just a dump of most current stuff from any subscription with no way to filter/sort/limit/etc.

Am I missing something, or is that it for YouTube support right now?
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Matt

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Re: YouTube support seems very minimal and not very usefull.
« Reply #1 on: October 28, 2014, 03:01:02 pm »

Wow -- you have a glass half-empty approach!
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

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Re: YouTube support seems very minimal and not very usefull.
« Reply #2 on: October 28, 2014, 04:00:53 pm »

I use it in Standard View to watch/download videos all the time now, since it runs through MC's audio and video engine which looks and sounds a hell of a lot better than the website.
 
I do wish that we could subscribe to a channel in the podcasts section of MC though, that would make it significantly more useful, and I doubt it would be much work to implement if it's built upon the existing support.
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BartMan01

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Re: YouTube support seems very minimal and not very usefull.
« Reply #3 on: October 28, 2014, 04:58:39 pm »

Wow -- you have a glass half-empty approach!

I guess that all depends on perspective.  What is currently available in Theater View is way different than what is available on the web page or any other YouTube app I have tried using.  What is there really doesn't fit my usage needs at all, and there is no way to configure/change it.  For it to be even remotely useful to me I need access to my channels, my subscriptions (and not just a one-screen dump of all of them since they are pretty varied), and my playlists.  For example, if I want to find an episode of /Drive, I don't want to filter through a bunch of kids programming (from the subscriptions for my one year old) to find it.

If I cared about searching for random videos with a remote control for a keyboard, looking at what was currently popular/trending, or seeing a bunch of 'Fail' videos (not even sure why that is in there unless it is a developer's inside joke) then it might be glass 'half full' for me.

Sorry, not trying to be hurtful - just providing honest feedback and/or looking to see what I am missing in the setup.  I have started using YouTube a lot more in recent months since a lot of original programming that I like has found its way there and I have been looking at my options for getting the content on the TV.  YouTube has always hung out on the far right side of the video menu in MC for me, so I mostly forgot it was even there.  Just tried actually using it logged in as me for the first time today.
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glynor

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Re: YouTube support seems very minimal and not very usefull.
« Reply #4 on: October 28, 2014, 07:24:27 pm »

what is available on the web page or any other YouTube app I have tried using.

All of which are written by Google and have access to their API (or else risk the same fate as the Windows Phone app).
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BartMan01

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Re: YouTube support seems very minimal and not very usefull.
« Reply #5 on: October 29, 2014, 09:59:26 am »

All of which are written by Google and have access to their API (or else risk the same fate as the Windows Phone app).

I am not completely familiar with that but from what I can tell the MS app was NOT written by Google and uses the YouTube API.  The issues that Google had were that the app written by Microsoft was violating the Google API terms of service by:
    Allowing users to download videos from YouTube
    Preventing the display of advertisements in YouTube video playbacks
    Playing videos that our partners have restricted from playback on certain platforms (e.g., mobile devices with limited feature sets)

If YouTube is truly a walled garden (like Netflix) then that is a shame and there is nothing anyone can do about it other than petition YouTube to write an app.  It does not appear to be the case though.  Google has a published API that does appear to provide access to channels and playlists (https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/channels) along with most if not all of the other advanced features available on the web site.
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glynor

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Re: YouTube support seems very minimal and not very usefull.
« Reply #6 on: October 29, 2014, 02:26:13 pm »

The Microsoft one was written by Microsoft. There is a long, sordid tale about it.

Google kept moving the goalposts. The list you gave was Google's first reason it was blocked.  Then, Microsoft fixed those issues, and it got unblocked for a day or three. Then Google blocked it again and gave new vague reasons.

Suffice to say, it is dangerous to try to use it, and the API in non-published so they can (and do) change it whenever they want with breaking changes.
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