Random Thoughts: Youtube Channel App on Wii

Yes, I still use my Wii on some occasions.  Usually, it's just to browse the web or use the Youtube app and its hapless streaming and buffering insanity.  I remember long ago before the html5 video days that Youtube videos used to stream at 240p reliably on the Internet Channel but those days are long gone.  While the Youtube app plays videos at crisp visual detail, the buffering insanity means you'll barely ever get to watch anything.

Last night, I had an idea to improve my usage experience of this horrible app.  This is to play only videos with smaller resolution when encoded on Youtube.  You'll spot video preview images that sport a letterbox-like black borders versus those that have the full screen when you search for videos.  I think that these imply the video source uploaded to Youtube was not ideal and the server encoding ended up producing odd borders.  Less video image information per packet, should mean better buffering, hopefully.  I tried it on one video and got reasonable streaming performance.  I will look for other videos and see if this theory works.

As a funny extra random thought.  Try browsing the Nintendo Miiverse using the Internet Channel and laugh at Nintendo.

Random thoughts: Wii and Youtube PLUS Latest on ALSA

I've been playing around with the Youtube app from the Nintendo Shop Channel and the old Wii and it buffers like there's no tomorrow.  I found a tip online that suggested to set the MTU (Maximum transmission unit) to 1500 instead of 0.  A higher MTU means more data is being transmitted per packet.  This seemed to improve the Youtube streaming.

On ALSA and Ubuntu, the last bit of my research lead me to Realtek's own ALSA fork as the daily HDA drivers from Ubuntu do not do me any good.  I could not wrap my mind around trying to dkms it, so instead, I'm going to shop around for a decent sound card.

That's all!

Even better Youtube Alternative on Android

I had a previous post regarding the old Youtube app no longer functioning and had recommended an app which in the long run did not perform as well as I had hoped.  This has lead me to look into PVSTAR+ which is remarkably more stable and has better streaming capabilities.  It's pretty good and deserves mention!

Old Youtube Doesn't Work Anymore

I'll keep this brief.  Awhile back, I had issues with the Youtube android app as it always had the "An error occurred" error, making me downgrade back to 4.1.23.  Now, the old Youtube version doesn't work at all because it cannot seem to connect to the network.  So, I looked for a replacement and found TubeMate.  It works really well though beware of fake apps!  I have a new post regarding this issue, please look into that one!

Youtube Android Woes

So, on that old Eken tablet, the Youtube app started acting up.  I am treated with the "An error occurred" when attempting to sign in with the app.  If I try to play any video, I get the "Unsupported video format" error which doesn't make sense at all.

So, I started looking into a possible fix for it when I found this helpful link.  Turns out, it is the answer!  I used the Youtube 4.1.23 apk off the web and it works like a charm.