IE9 doesnt play youtube videos anymore???

[FranceBB]

Actually yes, if you are running internet explorer 8 on Windows XP, YouTube actually recognises it and prompts you with an old style flash page (instead of an HTML 5 one). It doesn't have all the resolutions and it's a legacy page, but at least it works. I'm confident it will be fixed for IE9 as well. Anyway, you can try Google Chrome frame (I don't precisely remember its name) to actually integrate some chrome render capabilities in Internet explorer. Anyway, if you do have Adobe Flash Player installed and updated, YouTube should work on IE9 as it works on IE8.

[i430VX]

On 1/29/2019 at 9:57 AM, FranceBB said:

Actually yes, if you are running internet explorer 8 on Windows XP, YouTube actually recognises it and prompts you with an old style flash page

Are you sure? I'm unable to play youtube in IE8. My flash player is up to date. It does however load the old theme but no youtube player, just a black box

[FranceBB]

Actually, yes, as it works fine with Adobe Flash Player and IE8 on XP:

Edited January 30, 2019 by FranceBB

[jumper]

Might "downgrading" IE9's UA to IE8 help? If so, a batch or cmd file could be used to create a "Youtube app" by wrapping an "iexplorer9 " invocation in calls to change the registry (temp reg files created via echo).

[i430VX]

7 hours ago, FranceBB said:

Actually, yes, as it works fine with Adobe Flash Player and IE8 on XP:

It looks like you have google chrome frame installed as it's rendering the rest of the page better, too. No?
If you right click the video window it shows it's actually using flash?

Edited January 30, 2019 by i430VX

[FranceBB]

I do have Chrome Frame installed and I'm pretty sure it's using flash; anyway, I changed it to HTML5 and it works as well:

 

Besides, on Chromium 54 YouTube (normal) doesn't load:

Anyway, it seems that Google is trying to slowly kill Internet Explorer 'cause it doesn't officially support it, so my luck may come to an end anytime:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/175292?hl=en-GB

Quote

YouTube no longer supports Internet Explorer. Update your browser to MS Edge to continue using YouTube.

Out of curiosity, I tried to bring back my dusty Win98 and load YouTube; I expected to be prompted to the "Your browser is not supported" page:

but instead it didn't even load:

I tried to use the last version of K-Meleon compatible with Win98 (from years ago) and although it loaded the page, it clearly failed to display it properly:

 

[UCyborg]

So how do you get Flash player on YouTube? The option on HTML5 page to switch to Flash is long gone. I can only get HTML5 or nothing (turning off certain settings in Firefox also gives me nothing and the old extensions to force Flash are not effective). With IE8 on XP, the site is broken, but with Chrome Frame, it works with HTML5 player (no Flash neither).

On 1/29/2019 at 9:55 AM, Tamris said:

...seems YouTube is broken under IE9 again:

That's odd, this particular video plays on my end with Vista's IE9, but certain other videos are like in the above screenshot.

[FranceBB]

Actually, if you go to /HTML5 you can deflag "HTML 5 player is used when possible". This should trigger flash. Anyway, since you don't know why some videos play fine and some other don't, I started to think about a codec related problem, but YouTube just makes H.264 with AAC audio (or opus audio) videos for FULL HD and lower and VP9 videos for 4K and 8K, so it actually shouldn't be a codec issue. Perhaps they are changing something in their website and they are slowly removing flash, but just to make sure: do you have the k-lite codec pack? Would you mind installing it?

Edited February 5, 2019 by FranceBB

[UCyborg]

13 hours ago, FranceBB said:

Actually, if you go to /HTML5 you can deflag "HTML 5 player is used when possible".

That checkbox appears to be a static element rather than an actual checkbox. It's much like those checkboxes indicating browser support for specific formats/features. Either way, you haven't posted any screenshot indicating Flash player is actually used on your end. If it is, right-clicking on the video player would show "About Adobe Flash Player …" in the context menu. Though I did spot the reference to Flash when viewing the code.

13 hours ago, FranceBB said:

it actually shouldn't be a codec issue

The non-working videos produce a JavaScript error, non-supported codec would get you the error message on HTML player itself. I suspect the video that doesn't play on @Tamris's end, but plays here has to do with installed updates (I didn't have any extra software installed). I don't have enough knowledge about these things to recognize the pattern to be able to explain why some videos play, but others don't.

13 hours ago, FranceBB said:

do you have the k-lite codec pack?

K-Lite only influences media players that use DirectShow, IE9+ uses Media Foundation.

[Tamris]

Well, I have installed all the Server 2008 up to January 2019 ones, so I can't be up to date more than that, and I don't have any extra software installed either. Also, I just checked a different vid and it plays fine, though YouTube used the H264 codec instead, so looks like VP9 won't play, but H264 will play just fine, at least in my case, the one shown in my last post (and a couple other that I'm sure use VP9) still don't play, and I really have no idea how come they play for both of you.

[FranceBB]

4 hours ago, Tamris said:

the one shown in my last post (and a couple other that I'm sure use VP9) still don't play, and I really have no idea how come they play for both of you.

I didn't actually check the video you were talking about so far, but I did and I can confirm that it plays fine. Besides, it is actually using H.264.

On 2/4/2019 at 5:36 PM, UCyborg said:

 

I tried with some VP9 videos and they play since they have H.264 renditions as well, youtube just doesn't show the VP9 renditions (4K and 8K in this case):

 

@UCyborg Actually, you are right. I tried to get Flash working with the most common methods, but it didn't work at first.

- The check on the html5 page doesn't work, they replaced it with an image.

- &nohtml5=True doesn't work anymore.

- &nohtml5=1 alone doesn't work.

- &pow=1&nohtml5=1 doesn't work.

When I took a look at the source code, though, I noticed that there was still a flash player reference

<meta property="og:video:secure_url" content="https://www.youtube.com/v/1La4QzGeaaQ?version=3&autohide=1">

<meta property="og:video:type" content="application/x-shockwave-flash">

<meta property="og:video:width" content="1280">

<meta property="og:video:height" content="720">

but unfortunately, there are some issues; for instance, Full Screen is broken:

Besides, loading the saved and modified HTML page in IE8 this way actually prompted me to an error saying some rubbish about my browser sending data that has been blocked by google servers.

They are trying to make everything go through the HTML5 iframe api and when the iframe loads, it used to first check whether the browser was able to play videos using HTML5 or not

(something like)

try {

   var vid = document.createElement('video');

if('' != vid.canPlayType('video/mp4')){

   //html5 player

} else {

   //Flash fallback

}

} catch(e){

//Flash fallback

}

it wasn't only looking whether the browser supports the <video> tag, but also whether the <video> tag supports the mp4 codec, but it doesn't anymore, it just goes straight to HTML5, which basically means that they are trying to kill Flash once and for all and I'm wouldn't be surprised to find every Flash reference removed from the source code as well in the near future.

You can still change the prototype of the vid.canPlayType() method on Youtube webpages so that vid.canPlayType(‘video/mp4’) will return 

if(/^https:\/\/www\.youtube\.com\//.test(location.href){

document.createElement("video").constructor.prototype.canPlayType = function(a){ return '';};

}

but there's no guarantee they won't remove Flash from the source code anytime soon; besides, this is anything but practical to do, especially when you are watching videos, browsing them on YouTube.

Edited February 5, 2019 by FranceBB

[UCyborg]

6 hours ago, Tamris said:

Well, I have installed all the Server 2008 up to January 2019 ones, so I can't be up to date more than that

My Vista's image is from 2013. No newer updates integrated. Whatever the reason, browser just chokes on JavaScript.

1 hour ago, FranceBB said:

Besides, it is actually using H.264.

6 hours ago, Tamris said:

though YouTube used the H264 codec instead, so looks like VP9 won't play

No version of Internet Explorer supports VP9. Edge does, but must be explicitly enabled in about:flags. I haven't encountered a video that wouldn't play with H.264. Forcing H.264 can be useful if GPU doesn't support hardware decoding of VP9. Some people use h264ify extension with Chrome/Firefox browsers for this purpose.

1 hour ago, FranceBB said:

When I took a look at the source code, though, I noticed that there was still a flash player reference 

<meta property="og:video:secure_url" content="https://www.youtube.com/v/1La4QzGeaaQ?version=3&autohide=1">

<meta property="og:video:type" content="application/x-shockwave-flash">

<meta property="og:video:width" content="1280">

<meta property="og:video:height" content="720">

Saw that one too. I didn't see it when looking at the code with newer browsers.

1 hour ago, FranceBB said:

which basically means that they are trying to kill Flash once and for all and I'm wouldn't be surprised to find every Flash reference removed from the source code as well in the near future.

You're right, looks like they're in the process of cleaning up old Flash code.

1 hour ago, FranceBB said:

You can still change the prototype of the vid.canPlayType() method on Youtube webpages so that vid.canPlayType(‘video/mp4’) will return 

if(/^https:\/\/www\.youtube\.com\//.test(location.href){

document.createElement("video").constructor.prototype.canPlayType = function(a){ return '';};

}

Interesting!

1 hour ago, FranceBB said:

but there's no guarantee they won't remove Flash from the source code anytime soon; besides, this is anything but practical to do, especially when you are watching videos, browsing them on YouTube.

True.

[Tamris]

10 hours ago, FranceBB said:

I didn't actually check the video you were talking about so far, but I did and I can confirm that it plays fine. Besides, it is actually using H.264.

Maybe as a fallback yes, but it defaults to vp9.

10 hours ago, FranceBB said:

I tried with some VP9 videos and they play since they have H.264 renditions as well.

Yeah, but you're using Chrome Frame while I don't, and that's cheating.

[UCyborg]

He's cheating alright. No cheats here.

But it's probably not very significant difference in behavior. If IE9 compatibility was looked into, all videos would play for everyone, not just at random.

[Vistapocalypse]

Cooperation from XP enthusiasts might be helpful in many cases, but in this case has resulted in confusion. IE9 does at least support HTML5 (but not MSE), IE8 of course does not.

I can't seem to find an official YouTube statement regarding final deprecation of Flash Player, but know of no reason to disagree with the OP of this thread.

Support for Chrome Frame ended 5 years ago. When it comes to my own vintage Vista system, Chrome Frame would be as unwelcome as an Alien facehugger.

The obvious workaround is to use a different browser for YouTube, but +1 for wishing this wasn't necessary.