More than you think, actually. My wife recently signed up. I’m like, Babe! I already have uBlock Origin to block ads on desktop! On mobile, Firefox also blocks ads and allows listening to videos with the screen off. 😫
But, we still get ads on our smart LG TV. So. That’s apparently enough to throw the money away.
Look into getting SmartTube for the TV. Works pretty great for me
I was paying for it until it got to like $16.99 on iOS. As much of an annoyance to use a work around like AD Guard. I can now afford it but refuse to give those greedy mofos a dime.
I’d try it if they finally offered us a one year subscription period here in europe. they don’t. their loss 🤷♂️
My girlfriend said the same thing about Korea. Google keeps getting in their own way of selling a good service
Cancelled YouTube Premium, YouTube TV, and Netflix this month. Prime is up next. Will keep Spotify unless they decide to jack rates up again soon.
Spotify is an evil company. They’ve started adding fake songs in to pay themselves instead of paying royalties to real artists.
Yeah, I agree about them being evil. Unfortunately, I got outvoted on which services to keep.
Is that why I am getting about one ad for every 90 seconds of video ?
Is that how bad it is? Fuck…
Just recently it has gotten worse. The good thing is that I don’t watch TV at all any longer because I used youtube. Now I’m watching less youtube AND no TV so win win for my free time.
That actually makes more sense to me compared to most premium features. Higher quality directly costs more money to stream.
I pay for premium but would love to use peertube instead since it’s decentralized. It would be great to have all the people I sub to upload there as well then I’d bail.
YouTube already randomly drops me to 360p on my big-ass broadband sometimes because it just feels like it. What are the guarantees YouTube Premium won’t do that? ANSWER ME YOUTUBE, THIS IS CRUCIAL PRE-PURCHASE INFORMATION.
On mobile, many videos will start at 720 and I have to specifically select a higher resolution but it will stay there. It will have me wait for buffering if my internet isn’t capable but it won’t drop the resolution.
On pc it remembers the resolution you set last.
If your internet is flaky, there’s nothing YouTube can do about it. The alternative would be waiting for the video to buffer at 1080p.
i have 8gbps… youtube buffers nonstop for me. my connection isnt flaky, as I can maintain multi gigabit connections to upload and download sources without issue. youtube sucks
Check your browser
If it doesn’t work on Firefox, then it’s using non-standard web calls. Which Google is notorious for. That doesn’t make youtube suck any less.
Yup, i have the same issue on ff. It just stops and buffers. Goes through fine on the same pc when i test on chrome (used for work). Plays fine on embed, it’s just their website.
I just close the window. Don’t need youtube.
That’s what I do more and more. I’ve had my own invidious setup, I’ve done grayjay. If I continue to have problems, I’ll simply not use Youtube at all…
I paid for youtube red until it wasn’t reasonable anymore. I tolerated the ads until it wasn’t reasonable anymore. I can only do so many mitigations to youtube’s bullshit before I just stop…
Right now I have YT-dlp setup to import some channels into my plex setup. That may be all my house has here soon.
I on 300 mbps internet and barely had YouTube buffering on me. I can even run YouTube videos while watching multiple streams on both YouTube and Twitch and it doesn’t buffer.
Clearly the problem is either your connection is flaky or your device cannot handle a YouTube video. Maybe it’s a video driver issue or you accidentally turned on the feature that automatically upscale YouTube videos using Nvidia cards, assuming you have one. I had some buffering issue when I used this feature when it was first released.
No. On all accounts.
Linux, 7950x3d, rx7900xtx, 64 GB of ram. I’m a veteran in the IT world. It’s not my system. Those same multigig transfers happen over https traffic on domains I have control over. As far as “drivers” go… I’m on kernel 6.11.10, which is stable. If I can push 200 fps on beatsaber in VR… and that’s somehow a problem for Youtube… guess what! That’s Youtube’s fault.
What it is, Google pushes chrome and nerfs Firefox. Plain and simple. They push everything they can into their ecosystem and that makes youtube suck.
It’s well known. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/youtube-responds-to-delayed-loading-in-rival-browser-complaints
Edit:
My system pushing 7.1Gbps out it’s interface… (note the ~2gbps steady transfer happening prior to the test)
No issues with speedtest… (my 8gbps minus the 2-3gbps I’m pushing on the backend here…)
My connection is fiber. Little jitter, no fuss anywhere else. Youtube runs like ass because it IS ass.
But I’m watching YouTube on Firefox without spoofing my browser and never had this problem. It’s funny how some people are downvoting me for suggesting some solution to your problem, but idk.
Another potential issue is that it’s your ISP that is causing the problem. I have a less powerful system than you and a slower Internet while using Firefox, yet I’m not having any buffering issue, so our different ISPs might be the reason.
It could also be that you have a stricter standard for what you deem buffering than I do, considering your experience with that good of an Internet connection and PC. Mine only buffers less than a second at the start of the video while it loads, but I’ve never considered that an issue.
It’s a 70/30 split. 30% of the video I watch will have issues. And those videos will often spend more time buffering than playing the video.
And nearly 100% of the content I watch should be in youtube’s caching system. As I almost universally watch new releases from my subscription page and don’t tend to let the algorithm recommend anything to me. This has been my normal for years.
Except lately it’s gone up to nearly 100%. I can’t load a damn thing anymore (as of the past month or so). It just sits and spins, multiple devices including phone on cell network. I can only get phone to work using something like Grayjay.
You can claim that my ISP interchange might be at fault… But that wouldn’t explain why I have no issues with virtually any other platform on the entirety of the internet that I exchange packets with. This would still be squarely youtube’s fault. My ISP is one of the big ones, Lumen (Centurylink/Quantum). Lumen owns backhaul. A lot of backhaul. While it’s possible my local interchange is completely crammed full in other situations, I happen to know it’s not. We’re not even 1/4 of the way through their build out in my area. And the fiber goes straight to the head end for my area. There’s capacity galore.
What’s likely, and has already been cited is the fact that youtube has been waging war again firefox for a long time. It’s well documented. Further Google also has a history of targeting specific users where an account simply being logged in will achieve the same effect of constant buffering.
Youtube is bad. Here’s the kicker… Other platforms? Never have an issue. Twitch, Odysee, Rumble (Cringe platform, but a couple people I watch went there even though I wish they went elsewhere), hell even most peertube instances work with better results than Youtube does for me.
At this point I’m not interested in help fixing it. It’s clear there’s no helping Youtube. The platform is broken, both in the business sense and technologically.
Yow answer after this message from our sponsor!
I paid for premium recently which helps a bit except now the problem is a lot of the content I watch ppl are doing sponsored segments which I get but at the same time fuck off.
Actually you paying for premium hurts the rest of us. You’re rewarding them for the shit show that is modern-day-YT
You need to install the sponsor block extension
Majority of what I watch is on my TV. Phone is fine as is computer because of extensions and/or revanced
Sponsor block is great for that.
Majority of what I watch is on my TV. Phone is fine as is computer because of extensions and/or revanced
As with most things in the modern world that have gone to shit. It is not the monetization scheme in of itself that is the issue. It is the never ending desire for more profit this quarter than last forever.
If it was acceptable to stop trying to make even more once the cost to operate is covered and some healthy profit is made predictably then a lot less people would have issues. And enshitification would slow down.
I don’t care that enhanced Bitrate is premium only. I do care that you still need to click “advanced resolution settings” to access this even for premium users on mobile.
And even if you select high resolution preferred in settings, they will absolutely serve that shit at a low resolution forcing you to manually select the resolution every damn time.
Yes YouTube my connection is absolutely fast enough to watch at the max resolution you can serve, don’t pretend it’s my connection to cover for your intentional bumping down in resolution.
The speed at which you are connected to the internet via your ISP is only part of the path to youtube’s content servers. You could easily have a fast connection to an ISP with a congested uplink, you could be located a long way from the nearest google CDN, or that CDN could be overloaded.
You aren’t wrong in the bigger picture, but the fact that I can change to the highest resolution and I get essentially 0 buffer time and it just automatically starts playing at the higher resolution tells me that the bandwidth is there between my device and whatever server I end up connected to that is hosting the data. Otherwise I would likely have a slight delay of a few seconds for it to buffer as it pulls down the data.
ReVanced :)
Grayjay.app :)
„I don’t want to watch ads and I want everything to be free.”
My brother in christ, this is not how services work.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the ads were reasonably placed.
Don’t target people who come in from another domain or on the first viewed video. Pre- roll ads after that. Most importantly, ad breaks at creator-defined times only. Sick of ads coming in at arbitrary times in the middle of a sentence. That’s the worst part of it, IMO.
Oh and a time limit on ads. That has to happen too.
Also could somebody tell all the streaming companies that they know what language I watch all my videos in and to stop giving me Spanish language ads? Like, I got no problem with other languages, I just really feel like you’re wasting your advertisers money showing them to people who don’t know a quesadilla from a carton of pickles.
I was fine with it back when it was just one ad that you could skip.
I was fine with it back when it was just two ads that you could skip.
I was fine with it back when it was just two ads, and you could skip one, and the other was 5 seconds long. 10 was a stretch, but I’m patient.
Without an adblocker, now it’s playing an unskippable, 10+ seconds long ad at the start AND at the end. Some ads are as long as 20 seconds. If the video is long enough, it dares to abruptly play an ad right in the middle. You can’t skip that one, either. We’re back to television content-to-ad ratios - the exact thing I was happy to dump once there was enough content on YouTube. I was patient. That wasn’t enough for them. They can suck a beehive.
We’re back to television content-to-ad ratios
I hate ads too but we’re not there yet. When I stopped watching tv it was like at least 30% ads and I am sure it got worse the decade after I quit while it was still relevant.
I can be patient if the content is >10min long.
If I need to watch an ad for every 2-5min video of streamer clips I’d go balistic as that are even more ads than the broadcast tv nonsense.
Free-at-point-of-service is a common feature of amenities provided by countries with socialist economies.
But they only work when the economy is actively managed. If you’re just pumping cash into a big banking machine and telling people to grab for it, you’re not incentivizing any particular economic activity. You’re just encouraging entrepreneurs to get particularly good at snatching money out of the air and elbowing one another in the face.
Lol, yep that’s how it works in tha GAFAM ecosystem because YOU ARE THE PRODUCT. So I’m not giving a dime to google but I’m hapoy to support creators directly.
I don’t mind paying. Except if it’s evilcorp. Which it is.
According to Google, YouTube had made US$15.1 billion in ad revenue in 2019, […] nearly 10% of the total Alphabet revenue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Finances quoting https://abc.xyz/assets/investor/static/pdf/2019Q4_alphabet_earnings_release.pdf?cache=05bd9fe
Line must go up
Well companies do need to make money, yeah
Nah, they have enough money. They won capitalism. Billions in profit. Fuck advertisements. Directly support the creators in your life.
That turns out to be a lot more expensive, personally I’d get a lot less useful content/content I enjoy. I do chip in to a few patreons etc, but realistically someone like Karl Jobst or Levy Rozman or many other creators that I use to plug a 10 minute hole between tasks would likely get nothing from me because £10/mo is a lot for maybe 1-2 hours use a month.
Companies don’t need to make infinite money. That’s just a weird incentive that modern corporations seem to be chasing and burning everything down around them to achieve.
The Stock Market. It’s an inherent consequence of being a company that rapidly filled a new niche and being publicly traded. A private company wouldn’t have grown as quickly, but could in theory, transition into a steady state monetary model. The investors expect the same quarterly reports every single time and will not be satisfied with dividends. The founders might have pushed out long ago and executives who make the decisions have no long term commitment to the company, so they have no reason not to crash the company into the ground trying to wring every ounce out of their customer base.
they already did
It would be fine if there were so many ads
They finally shut off my premium account in Argentina for $3 and now I’ve been blasted with ads so much it’s unbearable. Like 3 ads every 3 mins pretty much.
Maybe I can try again in another country but I’m pretty sure they’re wise to it and demand a card used be of the same country too.
It’s fine on my phone but on the tvs where I mostly consume it’s hell on earth!
God damn YouTube. Why do we like it so much.
Like 3 ads every 3 mins pretty much.
It’s crazy on both ends of the pipeline. Like, if I’m an advertiser, I want my content to be relatively exclusive. I don’t want to be the twelfth ad you see in an hour. If I’m a consumer, I want a continuous uninterrupted stream of media. I don’t want a service that repeatedly cuts out, spams me with some volume-adjusted bullshit, and then cuts back in again seemingly at random.
Yeah I honestly don’t mind a short ad in between videos like the old days. But this shit right now is horrible, forcing people on to premium. YouTube don’t care about the creators they just want subs.
You could try SmartTube
It’s a great product. It is thanklessly maintained by a single developer who is constantly fighting Youtube changes to break it. If you do use it and like it, and you can afford it, please consider a few bucks a month via patreon to keep it alive.
It is thanklessly maintained by a single developer
A lot of these services are just passion projects by odd individual developers who create something for themselves and then share it with the rest of the world.
Github is great for this kind of spontaneous innovation. But it doesn’t do a good job of organizing communities at large. Why have six different “YouTube cleanup service” alternatives when you could have a single collaborative team working towards the same end-goal? Why are people constantly trying to “fix” YouTube when what we really seem to want is an alternative media host?
I am seriously thinking of cobbling together a cheap pc just to plug into my TV to watch things like YouTube without the ads.
I know right. I have Apple TV because it’s awesome and doesn’t have Ads everywhere like Google and fire tv.
I’m thinking an android tablet with revanced or similar and casting to the tv…
doesn’t have Ads everywhere like Google and fire tv.
yet.
I’m not sure if it counts as an AD but seems like an AD, many many moons ago (I think when Apple TV+ was introduced), they changed the “home screen” with the apps in your Apple TV to an Apple TV+ one with their content (and some linked from other platforms).
The apps view still exists but now the “home” button gets you to the Apple TV+ one unless you click it again from there (unless you accidentally scrolled a bit and the button) or double click it to open the menu with the recently opened apps.
You can change the home button behaviour in the settings to take you to the app view.
Casting on ReVanced will still have ads, because the ads are baked into the cast feature. The ad removal only works for the app itself.
I’ve got smartube on my fire TV
You can usually pay a radom guy in any latin American country who makes a business sharing family accounts for netflix etc. or just get ublock origin.
Try Invidious
I’ve heard there’s too many issues and they have to keep one step ahead of YouTube all the time and it’s getting difficult. Plus, can’t use that on TV
Any good instances? All I’ve tried are dead
It’s the world’s medium length video platform. If there’s an indie creator that’s good he’s there. Of course we like the whole world’s content that’s fed to us by an incredibly sophisticated algorithm.
uBlock Origin 🥳
I see this recommendation all the time. It frustrates me. I’m in favor of blocking ads and modding clients and whatever it takes to optimize one’s experience, but the majority - by far - of my YouTube experience takes place on my TV. I can’t do much to control it (pihole and other DNS solutions don’t work on YouTube since their ads are hosted in the same servers as their videos).
I could perform various modifications to the operating system of my TV, and trust me it’s tempting for a lot of reasons, but it was a very expensive (by my standards) TV so I want to at least wait until the warranty expires until I start experimenting.
I could also use something hooked up to my TV and mod that, which is my favorite idea, but my wife likes the interface as it is. It’s an LGTV with the … Sigh … “Magic” remote, which I absolutely hate, but I don’t want to take it away from her. It seems like that interface, especially the “magic” cursor, would be hard to replicate. I’d prefer not to go through the tedium of having two different systems.
Especially because we also have a console hooked up and no solution I’ve found so far has provided a simple way of switching between HDMI sources without running a disgusting number of cables. I did recently order a new receiver, so hopefully that helps with the multiple origins issue.
Obviously this is very much a a first world problem, and I apologize for my privilege, I just wanted to point out that uBO (or other software based solutions) aren’t always the solution.
Thanks for bringing this up, because it frustrates me as well. Most of the time I’m watching on a TV, and there’s no way to block YT ads on a TV. The people I share my house with aren’t technical and will watch YouTube even with ads. So to keep them out of my house I pay for YT premium.
Suggesting that people just do something technical and janky to block ads isn’t a solution for me, not because I can’t do it, but because there’s no way my family will do it.
It has been frustrating to read the various solutions that are all for PC or mobile, but there are some good solutions in this thread. Mad_Punda, who also replied to you separately, had what - at a glance - seemed like a pretty viable solution. Hopefully the new receiver I mentioned fixes things for me, but if not, I’ll be looking into his suggestion.
Good luck to you; though I don’t wish you to suffer, it’s nice to know I’m not alone.
I think there are ways, will likely vary by TV brand. I’ve set it up for my LG TV at home, it’s better than premium.
Edit: to clarify, I didn’t set up uBlock, I set up the TV with a patched TY app that has ad block and sponsor block. The latter makes it better than premium.
Oh and I can remove shorts.
LG AI Voice Remote?! That’s a huge no from me dawg hahaha
All of my screens just have computers hooked up to them, controlled by wireless keyboards with built-in touchpads. Adblocking on everything!
If I lived alone, this would be the way for me as well.
I recently spoke to LG support, rather at length, about an unrelated issue. During that conversation I asked if there was a way to turn off the “magic” cursor because fuck do I hate it. Apparently, there is: turn on narration - that is, the accessibility option that reads anything you highlight on screen in case you have vision issues. Why are the two things related, you ask, and why is it a binary option? I’m sure the answer is because LG leadership wants you to use the cursor, but apparently they couldn’t think of a PR friendly answer, because every time I asked support changed the subject.
Woof… I’m so sorry you hafta deal with that. I hate anything listening to me. D: I’m thankful both my partner and myself love using keyboard with touchpad.
I love my wife extensively and for many reasons, but her respect for privacy concerns is not among them.
If your wife wants her familiar interface with ads, then she made the choice that you’re watching ads on YouTube on your TV.
I agree. Once my warranty expires or I get brave enough to tinker with the OS hopefully the “ads” part will no longer be relevant.
I recently set up dev mode on my LG TV and installed a patched version of YouTube with ad block and sponsor block. I don’t think this voids warranty.
If there’s interest I could look up the instructions I used (I’m traveling right now).
If things don’t work out with the receiver, I’ll look into this. Thank you for the suggestion.
Thank you for the recommendation and I’ll investigate this.
I haven’t personally used it, but a buddy likes it.
Even if you have a device connected to your TV to block ads when you’re using Youtube, nothing prevents her from using the TV OS when she does.
That’s why I mentioned the console. She and our kid both use that pretty extensively. Obviously I can switch the HDMI cables around manually as necessary, but they’re in a fairly awkward spot and I have some mobility issues. Once the new receiver arrives, I hope to be able to switch between devices using a remote, at which point I’m more likely to be plausibly able to do this.
Your general point is acknowledged and appreciated, though.
You’re me but elsewhere it seems.
I don’t have a solution either unfortunately
I certainly haven’t had time to investigate them, but there are one or two decent solutions proposed in this thread. So far I think the “dev mode” suggestion is my favorite idea. I’ll look into that and try to remember to let you know how it goes.
I totally get that, I have a few suggestions since I’ve been in the same situation for years and have recently improved it.
Our Yamaha stereo takes many HDMI inputs, and has a single TV output, so the TV never needs to change inputs. It’s quite easy and quick on the Yamaha.
I bought a Raspberry Pi 500 for ~$100 US and am loving it. I think it could use a speed upgrade (I hear the SD card will do it). Of course it’s mouse and keyboard, but we only use it for Netflix, YouTube, etc, so it was easy to make shortcuts and get a small/nice living room keyboard/mouse combo.
It’s led to zero ads, and the household discussion was like “would you trade some ease of use to not see this stupid ad?” And we both agreed that it’s worth it. So far it’s been really nice.
Living room? Logitech k400!
I’ve been eyeing this little gadget, maybe it would solve the inconvenience issue?
Logitech K400 on all my machines!
thank you! i was hesitant to get one that was unbranded, but i am more inclined to get one by Logitech!
I have three of them and I love them! One TINY complaint is that if I’m all fucked up on drugs, the thumb sweat makes the touchpad very difficult to use. But that’s only a couple times a year, so it’s not a huge deal. My oldest is like eight years old and I have spilled on it, and it still works!
Thank you for the recommendation! I have, at this point, probably five forms of HDMI splitters, including at least two receivers (though admittedly no stereos). Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get any of them working with the TV. I think, though I can’t confirm, that HDCP is the problem. The best I’ve managed to do is a multitude of sources plugged into the the splitter, but only two of them working; specifically my (original) switch and (also original) Steam Deck seem to be pretty recalcitrant.
I’m hoping the problem is the splitter / receiver. The new one, which promises HDCP compatibility, is set to arrive in four days. My fingers are metaphorically crossed. I’ve already replaced everything else but the consoles, so the next troubleshooting step, replacing the consoles, would be much more expensive.
Yes, certainly, fuck their ads; but that wont restore the degraded resolution now will it.
The 1080p non-premium looks like shit, not better than 720p. I think they reduced the Bitrate a lot and premium restors the original Bitrate.
Bitrates have always been garbage to be fair
