A few YouTube videos not playing on private channel

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I’m new to the world of Roku channel development. Last month, I created a private channel for a religious non-profit ministry that has posted hundreds of videos on YouTube for all to view free of charge. When I created the channel, I used the YouTube URLs for the content streams. All the videos played (and continue to play) without any problems. But, two weeks ago, I added six more videos to the channel. Only one of those newly added videos plays without any problems. The remaining five videos stop streaming exactly one second after starting; then the following announcement appears on screen: “Sorry, this program is temporarily unavailable.” In order to solve the problem, I’ve taken the following steps: triple checked the URLs, updated the Roku system several times, restarted the Roku system at least three times, substituted different URLs to see if it might be something other than the URLs themselves, compared and contrasted the malfunctioning URLs with each other and with those that are functioning well. All without success. The only differences that I’ve been able to detect are the letters, numbers, and symbols following the = sign, which makes sense. It appears that there is something about the URLs of those particular videos that is causing them to stop playing. Is anyone familiar with this problem? Does anyone have a possible solution? Thanks!

~ Eric

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“Eric_Dantes” wrote:
I’m new to the world of Roku channel development. Last month, I created a private channel for a religious non-profit ministry that has posted hundreds of videos on YouTube for all to view free of charge. When I created the channel, I used the YouTube URLs for the content streams. All the videos played (and continue to play) without any problems. But, two weeks ago, I added six more videos to the channel. Only one of those newly added videos plays without any problems. The remaining five videos stop streaming exactly one second after starting; then the following announcement appears on screen: “Sorry, this program is temporarily unavailable.” In order to solve the problem, I’ve taken the following steps: triple checked the URLs, updated the Roku system several times, restarted the Roku system at least three times, substituted different URLs to see if it might be something other than the URLs themselves, compared and contrasted the malfunctioning URLs with each other and with those that are functioning well. All without success. The only differences that I’ve been able to detect are the letters, numbers, and symbols following the = sign, which makes sense. It appears that there is something about the URLs of those particular videos that is causing them to stop playing. Is anyone familiar with this problem? Does anyone have a possible solution? Thanks!

~ Eric

What Roku component are you using that allows you to specify a “YouTube URL”, and where you getting the url from?

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I’ve copied the URLs directly from YouTube and pasted them in the URL box on the Content page, which is on the Instant TV Channel for Roku: Cloud-Based Roku Channel Production System Web page.

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“Eric_Dantes” wrote:
I’ve copied the URLs directly from YouTube and pasted them in the URL box on the Content page, which is on the Instant TV Channel for Roku: Cloud-Based Roku Channel Production System Web page.
If Instant TV Channel created your channel then you need to contact them. They’re not affiliated with Roku.

5

Are you aware that you are violating YouTube’s terms of service by playing the videos in a Roku channel?

Section 4.C.
You agree not to access Content through any technology or means other than the video playback pages of the Service itself, the Embeddable Player, or other explicitly authorized means YouTube may designate.

–Mark

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No, I was not aware that I am in violation of YouTube’s Terms and Condition. Thank you for letting me know I will cease immediately.

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You may want to look through the “Hosting for video files” thread at the top of the developer forum for other hosting options.

–Mark

8

Thank you for the suggestion. I shall do so.

Given that the YouTube channel is available on Roku, why does YouTube prohibit individuals from using selected YT videos on their own channels, in particular private, non-profit channels?

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“Eric_Dantes” wrote:
Thank you for the suggestion. I shall do so.

Given that the YouTube channel is available on Roku, why does YouTube prohibit individuals from using selected YT videos on their own channels, in particular private, non-profit channels?
Because they don’t have control over the playback experience unless you’re using one of their players.

10

By playback, do you mean “rewind” or play again? If so, then why is that of such importance to YouTube? My guess is analytics and statistics. Is that a correct guess? If so, then, again, just a guess, some how, that translates into revenue for YT. Am I right? How, exactly, does that work? Is it those banner ads that pop up at the bottom of the screen? I assume that a new and different ad pops up with playback?

By the way, thanks to all of you for your patience and for taking the time to answer my questions and educate me. This is a strange new world for me but a fascinating one. I’m learning a lot.

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“Eric_Dantes” wrote:
By playback, do you mean “rewind” or play again?
I mean the entire playback experience, including trick play, ad insertion, UI, analytics, etc. Remember that you’re using YouTube’s servers and bandwidth for free. For a small non-profit like yourself, that probably doesn’t translate to much for them, but imagine if a larger streaming provider decided to go that route. On the web and on many other set top platforms, you’d use YouTube’s HTML5 player for playback. Unfortunately, Roku doesn’t currently support that. If they ever add that ability in the future, then there’d be no problem streaming YouTube hosted video, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen…

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Thank you TheEndless for taking the time to give me a clear and full explanation. I appreciate it.