If you haven't noticed, YouTube has switched to HTML5 as its default web player. Some people, like myself, have noticed that they can no longer watch videos above 360p in quality when using Firefox. Why only some are affected is beyond me. But this is a typical occurrence when working with computers. I imagine it's just a evil corporate headquarters thing.
I continue to run Windows XP, as it is an immortal, living god. It may be a stupid god, that has trouble with more than 2 cores, but it is immortal nonetheless. Which is why I use it. It's also kind of like duct tape. It can literally do just about anything because its so old and refuses to die, probably because it is immortal. I do not question my XP god. Its reasons are its own.
So here goes. I am uncertain if this fixes problems with versions higher than XP, while I have read that it sometimes affects them, I haven't ran into the problem on the machines I own that run higher versions..though this fix would probably work. This is what it took for me to get it working.
Method 1:Simply download a Firefox extension that allows you to switch the HTML5 videos back to Flash. It's a temporary workaround since YouTube may one day get rid of its Flash compatibility entirely.
A good one is the "YouTube Flash Video Player" by Baris Derin.
Method 2:This one is a bit more permanent solution I believe, since it turns out its not an XP problem (despite others' claims,) nor is it really a Firefox problem as to why we no longer have higher quality options on YouTube (because it works fine on Firefox if you tell them your not Firefox.) For some, step 1 solves the issue. I have a gut feeling it only solves it for people on versions higher than XP, though I could be wrong here. Hard to tell when people who discover the answer to their problem never come back to the forum to tell others, because their problem is now fixed.
Such a sad yet common problem. But for me it took step 2 also, which is why I believe it is a corporate agenda at our expense again just because they are a bunch of stinkers, probably just trying anything and everything possible to kill the immortal god, XP.
lol (I'm looking at you too phone manufacturers, who lock our bootloaders, make non replaceable battery packs, then turn around and silently remove sd card slots so they are no longer usable as a portable flash drive that you can conveniently take with you to a friend's house and have it work on any computer they have, then since all the storage is now on the internal memory they switch the protocol to MTP as a security measure so we cant use it as a usb mass storage device without a painful procedure just to ruin us XP users day. ugh. 47 steps backwards.
)
Step 1.Open "
about:config" in your Firefox address bar. Tell it yes, yes, sell my soul, yes, warranty something, yes.
Change values of these settings to
True:
media.mediasource.enabled
media.mediasource.youtubeonly
media.mediasource.mp4.enabled
media.mediasource.webm.enabled
media.fragmented-mp4.exposed
media.fragmented-mp4.ffmpeg.enabled
Step 2.If you're like me and do not like doing this part manually every time, or have no idea what you are doing, download a "
User Agent Switcher." What is a User Agent Switcher you ask? It is an option that tells the website you are visiting that you are someone else, using different settings. For instance, in my case I run XP with Firefox. It turns out, that if I tell YouTube that I am using Google Chrome or Internet Explorer, it suddenly works fine and gives me my settings for higher quality back. Which is BS.
A good, easy to use User Agent Switcher for Firefox is "
User Agent Switcher by Linder"
I found that I had to include both steps for it to work on my machine, either step by itself would not work. It is either a mistake by someone "up top" doing the coding, or deliberate. Regardless, no one has decided to fix it yet as usual.
I'm just putting this here in case I need it again, and if it helps you then you are welcome.
Please excuse my occasionally rant. It just seems there is a continuous onslaught by an upper echelon to always try to keep humanity in a constant pendulum between two equally useless places, always guiding them between the two by the nose, and keeping the two places distant enough that humanity's attention span forgets the first just as it manages to make it near the second. All the while doing its best to tighten down any constraints and remove as many freedoms it can under a guise of "moving forward." May they all burn.
