Some Firefox users noticed playback issues on YouTube for several months. These affected high resolution videos only, from 1080p and up. To make matters worse, no clear pattern could be identified.

Some videos played fine, others would stop abruptly when they ran out of buffer.

  • JPAKx4
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    5 months ago

    Reminder for everyone to use a user-agent spoofing extension to make their Firefox appear to be chrome/another browser to Google

    • noodlejetski@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      sadly, skewing stats like that gives Google more reason not to support Firefox in the long run.

      • petrol_sniff_king
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        5 months ago

        Well… yes, but I assume that this specifically was sabotage. Like how Intel products have been throttling amd cpu performance for years.

    • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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      5 months ago

      It seems Netflix is able to detect that spoofing, and sends this error when trying to play videos, “Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again later.”. I had to disable my add-ons one by one to identify that it was User Agent Switcher causing it.

      • Sestren@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Simple solution is to not pay Netflix and just pirate their content. They go out of their way to make the experience worse for paying customers on a regular basis. Sonarr+Jellyfin on an old computer with no video card and you’ve got a better Netflix where your content doesn’t just magically disappear or fail to play on some devices.

        • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          This ends with $500/mo Netflix subscriptions. An employee comes to your house and holds a laptop up in front of your couch while looking for hidden cameras camming the show.

          Bathroom breaks are allowed, but they’ll pause the show.

        • SeekPie@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          I’ve been really ahpy with Stremio + Real-Debrid. Yes, it costs money, yes it’s worth it (less than 3€/month).

          • Azzu@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            Any piracy costing money is also really really likely to be shut down relatively soon, making you need to change your setup.

      • mrvictory1@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        The DRM module tells Netflix you are on Firefox. For Netflix I would use Chrome on Wine tbh, it now supports 1080p w/o extensions. Or maybe Chromium w/ ChromeOS’ Widevine module.

    • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Any you recommend? I tried this during during the first round of YouTube fuckiness on Firefox, and it didn’t seem to make a difference.

      I’m also probably the least techy person on Lemmy, so chances are high that I fucked something up.

      • JPAKx4
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        5 months ago

        I personally use Chameleon on Firefox. Alternativly, you may find luck using a web client such as piped.

      • InternetUser2012@midwest.social
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        5 months ago

        When it all goes down, there’s always the option of just downloading what you want to watch and watch it in your favorite media player. That’s what I do on my phone since I refuse to watch ads and they make everything buffer. Hit the dl button and in under a minute i have the video downloaded in hd.