IE9 doesnt play youtube videos anymore???

[apreese16]

Hello everyone, I have just recieved an old Vista machine from my grandparents. I have cleaned it out completely, (SuperAntiSpyware was a huge help! I recommend it!), but anyway, I would like to use IE9 as a main browser. I like the way IE9 looks, and IE is a pretty nostalgic thing to me so I try to use it whenever I can. There is just one problem... YouTube doesnt play videos! Maybe it's just my computer though. On IE9 Youtube.com/html5 states that my browser supports: HTMLVideoElement, H.264, and WebM VP8 (I downloaded the VP8 codec here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/webmmf/ ). Even though I have These codecs, when I click on a video a black screen shows up where the video player should be. Is there something I need to correct in IE's "Internet Options," or does it require more html5 codecs to play videos now? All help is appreciated.

Edited September 2, 2018 by apreese16

[i430VX]

My friend and I had noticed this, it's been happening for at least a month now.

It's not just you.

[Vistapocalypse]

This issue is probably related to the fact that YouTube no longer supports Internet Explorer - not even IE11: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/175292?hl=en. Of course Google owns YouTube, and Google won't be happy until everyone is using Chrome. I have even seen reports that YouTube deliberately slows down Edge and Firefox. Of course IE9 has been "deprecated" for years (Oops! Your browser is no longer supported), so this issue isn't very shocking.

I don't blame you for wanting to use IE9 as your main browser, especially now that it is the only browser that works on Vista for which security updates are still available (although the updates are labeled "for Windows Server 2008"). I wonder if you have looked at this thread: https://msfn.org/board/topic/176902-enabling-tls-1112-support-in-vistas-internet-explorer-9/?

[Vistapocalypse]

On 9/6/2018 at 1:47 PM, Vistapocalypse said:

YouTube no longer supports Internet Explorer - not even IE11: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/175292?hl=en.

Well I tested IE11 on Windows 10 and it can play YouTube videos despite what that link says, so spoofing IE11 might work for IE9 on Vista. Edit: Spoofing IE11 does not work.

Edited September 18, 2018 by Vistapocalypse
Ambiguous after Chronius edited next post

[Chronius]

banana

Edited September 15, 2018 by Chronius

[Vistapocalypse]

Thanks for trying anyway.

[i430VX]

19 hours ago, Vistapocalypse said:

Well I tested IE11 on Windows 10 and it can play YouTube videos despite what that link says, so spoofing IE11 might work for IE9 on Vista.

Yes, IE11 on 7 works too. Can anyone test IE10?

[Vistapocalypse]

1 hour ago, i430VX said:

Yes, IE11 on 7 works too. Can anyone test IE10?

I think IE10 is still supported on Windows 8.0. I'm also curious, but knowing won't help with IE9 on Vista.

[i430VX]

Well... there was that IE10 preview that ran on Vista. right? While not identical to release IE10, it could help, perhaps. (Albeit still not IE9)

 

Edited September 8, 2018 by i430VX

[spookymulder90]

Youtube is working on Windows 8.0 and IE10 (you get info about unsupported browser, but everything is working)

 

Edited September 8, 2018 by spookymulder90
other image

[apreese16]

Thank you guys for taking the time to test that stuff out. I will say it is very weird that ( https://www.youtube.com/html5 )claims that IE9 supports just as many html5 player features as IE10 and IE11, yet it still doesn't play videos. Strange.

[VistaLover]

On 9/2/2018 at 8:35 AM, apreese16 said:

YouTube doesnt play videos! Maybe it's just my computer though. On IE9 Youtube.com/html5 states that my browser supports: HTMLVideoElement, H.264, and WebM VP8 (I downloaded the VP8 codec here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/webmmf/ ). Even though I have these codecs, when I click on a video a black screen shows up where the video player should be.

IE9 (32-bit) on Vista SP2 Home Premium 32-bit here

The youtube.com/html5 test is correct when it comes to IE9 on Vista (no VP8 support here):

IE9 has no support for MSE; after Google ceased supporting Adobe Flash Player (all 3 variants of it, i.e. activeX, NPAPI, PPAPI) on youtube, the only thing left for IE9 to handle was progressive download of mp4 files (encoded in h264/aac) over HTML5, and I recollect the limitation of not being able to go Fullscreen on the embedded player (a message about unsupported browser was displayed ) ... 

It was at the start of summer that I accidentally noticed yt was unplayable on IE9, as I'm hardly using IE9 for anything this day and age... I did not lament the loss of yt on IE9, in any case it had been an unsupported browser many moons ago already...

But it was this thread that made me want to investigate things... So:

On 9/7/2018 at 11:33 PM, Vistapocalypse said:

Well I tested IE11 on Windows 10 and it can play YouTube videos

On 9/8/2018 at 11:14 PM, spookymulder90 said:

Youtube is working on Windows 8.0 and IE10

On 9/9/2018 at 12:00 AM, apreese16 said:

I will say it is very weird that ( https://www.youtube.com/html5 ) claims that IE9 supports just as many html5 player features as IE10 and IE11, yet it still doesn't play videos. Strange. 

Well, youtube claim they don't officially support any IE version anymore, yet tests show that IE10/IE11 still work, while (obviously) previous versions don't...

Loading Introducing iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR in IE9 (after you declined to upgrade your browser, that is...), you get the empty embedded player, as per OP:

For troubleshooting, open IE9's developer tools (F12) and load (browser) Console; refresh youtube page:

To load their embedded player, yt use, among other things, a JS script named base.js; URI for my locale is:

https://www.youtube.com/yts/jsbin/player-vflkUTZn2/el_GR/base.js

That script uses in 19 instances the

window.matchMedia

code snippet; a Google search on matchMedia yields the following two results (among others):

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/matchMedia#Browser_compatibility

https://caniuse.com/#feat=matchmedia

where one can see that the needed API was introduced only in IE10+, i.e. IE9 does not understand window.matchMedia and chokes, failing to load the HTML5 youtube player:

Mozilla Firefox, OTOH, supports the function from an early version 6 - and Chrome from version 9...

Not strange anymore, is it?

[VistaLover]

I inadvertently found out that Internet Explorer 9 is again, as of late, able to play back youtube videos, so it appears Google (the owner of youtube) have patched their scripts to cater to IE9; this surely comes as a (nice ) surprise, but the reason behind such a move seems inexplicable to me... Perhaps was to support WS 2008 SP2 (officially supported until Jan 2020), on which IE9 is the only version of the native Microsoft browser to run, but I'm not convinced...

For whatever reason, youtube now has been restored to its previous state in IE9, serving standalone MP4 encodes over HTML5 (usually only in 360p quality variant - some videos with more relaxed copyright also come with an additional (HD) 720p variant). As before, there's no way to go full screen:

The MP4 decoding relies on system h.264/aac decoders (Windows Media Foundation), which means you need installed both SP2 + Platform Update Supplement for Vista...

OT: Notice in the top blue ribbon how Google are eager to push their own (spyware of a) browser, even on a currently unsupported platform (i.e. Vista)...

[burd]

On 9/9/2018 at 1:37 AM, i430VX said:

Well... there was that IE10 preview that ran on Vista. right? While not identical to release IE10, it could help, perhaps. (Albeit still not IE9)

 

yes , i have the ie10 preview , i could give it a try , but seeing that the problem is fixed ( maybe) , i will refrain from doing so for now

Edited November 25, 2018 by burd

[Tamris]

...seems YouTube is broken under IE9 again:

It's even more weird because per @FranceBB's post in XP forums, it seems to work fine in IE8, 8 even displays YouTube overall better...

Nevermind, apparently he has Google Frame installed and that's why YouTube works better for him,

Edited January 31, 2019 by Tamris