Is it just me or is Youtube slower than ever?

[JimmiG]

I used to be able to watch HD videos just fine but it seems in the last month or so Youtube as taken a turn for the worse. I now pretty much have to rip and download the videos if I want to watch them in anything higher than 480p.

I'm currently downloading one such video that just kept buffering, and the download speed is currently 44KB/s. It's going to take 2 hours to download a 20 minute clip. No wonder it's impossible to stream it

It seems to depend on the particular video too, or maybe the time of day or something. Because occasionally 1080p videos suddenly start working fine for a while for no apparent reason. My Internet connection is working fine otherwise.

 

[KeithTalent]

I blame felixdekat.

KT

 

[clamum]

In my experience, it's gotten progressively slower over the past couple years or so. I sometimes have trouble streaming 720p (or have to pause 480p for a minute or so, for that matter) even though bandwidth tests show my download almost 30Mbsp and upload at least 15Mbps.

Strangely, last night I noticed one 720p was buffering very quickly and I could stream it while a different channel's 480p I had to pause and wait for it to buffer before I could watch.

 

[Anubis]

its not you its slower than shit now. unless you are watching a video that has a few million views even 480p wont play in realtime on a 20meg connection

 

[Markbnj]

Yep, there's a reason for all those memes that play off Youtube and a spinner. Maybe they should buy Vimeo and learn how to stream modern format videos.

 

[Phoenix86]

Popular videos load too fast, even on the highest setting (load time vs play time is over double). Less popular videos load for shit, and of course they stop loading at a certain point if you hit pause...

 

[Sonikku]

What is irritating is that if the video can't keep up it keeps stuttering, so you pause it to give it time to catch up. But that doesn't work either any more, it stops loading shortly after you pause it so the only way to watch some videos is to mute it (so it doesn't drive you crazy with the volume starting and stopping every few seconds) and let it start and stutter, start and stutter, over and over again until it finishes while you do something on another tab.

 

[Ns1]

YT plays great on my phone, sucks balls on the computer.

 

[Tsavo]

Utter crap.

 

[Juddog]

What is irritating is that if the video can't keep up it keeps stuttering, so you pause it to give it time to catch up. But that doesn't work either any more, it stops loading shortly after you pause it so the only way to watch some videos is to mute it (so it doesn't drive you crazy with the volume starting and stopping every few seconds) and let it start and stutter, start and stutter, over and over again until it finishes while you do something on another tab.

Yeah I noticed the same thing. I used to be able to queue up several windows of videos if I wanted to watch something in 1080p, now instead I pause it, come back minutes later, and it still runs like crap. Then to top it off, watching a video once, then going back and replaying, it seems like it requeues it now.

It's almost like youtube wants you to use a third party app to rip the .flv right off the site, because their own player is downright terrible.

 

[ghost recon88]

YouTube is loads slower than it used to be Too many damn kids uploading shit from their smartphones.

 

[Juddog]

YouTube is loads slower than it used to be Too many damn kids uploading shit from their smartphones.

Don't worry - Meokat is on it, policing youtube for you.

 

[coldmeat]

What is irritating is that if the video can't keep up it keeps stuttering, so you pause it to give it time to catch up. But that doesn't work either any more, it stops loading shortly after you pause it so the only way to watch some videos is to mute it (so it doesn't drive you crazy with the volume starting and stopping every few seconds) and let it start and stutter, start and stutter, over and over again until it finishes while you do something on another tab.

But then when you click to restart, or drag the slider back to the start, it reloads the video half the time anyway.

 

[gamefreakgcb]

But then when you click to restart, or drag the slider back to the start, it reloads the video half the time anyway.

True dat. I've basically stopped using YT for now.

 

[tfinch2]

Srsly, it sucks now. Takes like 30 seconds to load any video on my Nexus 7. Even the ads lag.

 

[zCypher]

I dunno what you guys are talking about, it has always worked perfectly fine for me on my main computer (cable connection), my phone, and family's computers on a DSL connection. I've seen people here complain about YouTube speeds a fair bit, but I've never really seen any difficulty regardless of the video quality or popularity, always seems to just play fine. I'm wondering if it's more an issue of some ISPs routing tables, traffic shaping or QoS policies or what, I dunno. Weird that so many of you would have issues like that.

 

[Newbian]

Srsly, it sucks now. Takes like 30 seconds to load any video on my Nexus 7. Even the ads lag.

If you see ads you are doing it wrong.

 

[Wyndru]

Popular videos load too fast, even on the highest setting (load time vs play time is over double). Less popular videos load for shit, and of course they stop loading at a certain point if you hit pause...

I've noticed this too, could be related to server caching/replication. I wonder if at any given time certain geographic areas can be slower than others because of this. The replication that goes on in google's server farms must be insane.

Either that or they just simply throttle lower popularity videos to preserve bandwidth for the higher popularity ones.

 

[Red Squirrel]

What is irritating is that if the video can't keep up it keeps stuttering, so you pause it to give it time to catch up. But that doesn't work either any more, it stops loading shortly after you pause it so the only way to watch some videos is to mute it (so it doesn't drive you crazy with the volume starting and stopping every few seconds) and let it start and stutter, start and stutter, over and over again until it finishes while you do something on another tab.

I noticed this too, very annoying. Youtube has actually gone to crap. Need something else to replace it.

 

[mikegg]

It's kind of random with me. Sometimes it plays everything. Sometimes it stutters and struggles with 1080p.

It's really annoying when it doesn't work or it doesn't want to load. My connection is always fast enough.

 

[Newbian]

I blame people that try watching every video as 1080p when a bit lower quality would work just as well in most cases.

 

[AstroManLuca]

If you see ads you are doing it wrong.

Is there a way to block ads from a smartphone or tablet? I haven't seen a YouTube ad on my computer in years but my phone is a different matter.

Oh and it doesn't work well on my phone either. I have to turn off HD/HQ just to be able to watch something.

 

[JimmiG]

In my experience, it's gotten progressively slower over the past couple years or so.

True, but in the last month or so it seems performance has reached a new all time low. It's getting to the point where it's un-usable.

Popular videos load too fast, even on the highest setting (load time vs play time is over double). Less popular videos load for shit, and of course they stop loading at a certain point if you hit pause...

I think I've noticed something similar. It seems they move popular videos to faster servers and keep the less popular ones on crappy old servers. Very annoying unless you just want to watch Gangnam Style...

YT plays great on my phone, sucks balls on the computer.

Same here. They actually seem to play better on the phone than on the computer.

 

[BUTCH1]

Sucks ass nowadays and at least in the past you could mute it and let it finish loading, now it will only buffer out 4-5 seconds and stops. If they don't start to add server capacity soon YT will just continue to lose viewers and ad revenue, if it were your $$ would you like to spend it on a service that sucks so bad most just don't bother these days?..

 

[who?]

When it's 2am central time here it's 8am or later in Europe and Africa. I wonder if it slows down here when the people over there are watching videos.