Where Are All the YouTube Videos, iPhone?
So far the iPhone has been kicking ass and taking names. I’d write my initial impressions, but people like John Gruber and Jason Kottke have already done that. Instead, I want to bitch and moan.
My biggest gripe with the iPhone is that the dedicated YouTube software that comes with it doesn’t seem to have access to the full YouTube library. This became apparent to me when I went looking for the SNL digital short Dear Sister. If you enter “dear sister” in the iPhone YouTube’s search field you get two results, “Dear Mr. President” (which is a video of the singer Pink singing to President Bush) and “Dear, Vanessa & Stella Hudgens” (which is an idiotic short video about two chicks and a bottle of water). However, if you open up iPhone Safari and navigate to YouTube.com and search for “dear sister” you get 2,350 results, with the correct video showing up at number 11. ((The fact that it’s #11 and not #1 is an issue with YouTube to be discussed at a later date.))
That’s not all. Search for “darkplace” with iPhone YouTube and you get zero results. YouTube.com returns 456 results, which are all hilarious. ((Trivia: The protagonist of “Darkplace”, Garth Marenghi, did the narration for the equally hilarious film Hot Fuzz.))
I have no idea what the problem is, but I’m finding more and more of my favorite videos aren’t to be found, which makes iPhone YouTube barely useful to me. I don’t know if the fault lies with Apple or YouTube, but someone needs to get their act together on this, or so help me there will be hadoukens. Oh yes, there will be hadoukens!
UPDATE: Also missing from iPhone YouTube is the video of Steven Colbert singing a love song in Korean. Oddly, searching “colbert” in iPhone YouTube brings up a lot of videos of Ron Paul.
UPDATE 2: OK, dave has laid this completely to rest. I forgot the YouTube videos supported by Apple (AppleTV and iPhone) need to be converted to H.264, which explains why these videos are missing. My righteous indignation has subsided. I go back now to watch the SNL Dick in a Box short on my iPhone (which, btw, looks better on the iPhone than on the web, probably because it’s H.264).
There have been 4 comments
Hey, take a deep breath and relax… Apple and Google have been very up front about the fact that YouTube is converting their video catalog to H.264 as fast as they can, and they expect to have the entire catalog available by the fall (for both iPhone and Apple TV). More of the catalog is being converted every day. This was not a dark secret. Frankly, if this really bothers you as much as it seems to, try watching YouTube on another phone. Verizon phones, for example, allow you to watch YouTube videos, but only through Vcast for $15 per month, and only about 100 videos that meet Verizon’s acceptable guidelines, mostly stuff from NBC, etc. Give it a little time and you’ll have the entire catalog at your disposal. YouTube, like everything else on the iPhone, is only going to get better and better with time.
*Bonks head*
Of course, I forgot the videos have to be H.264.
Good call.
The best video ever, Drinking out of cups, is in the same sorry state of conversion. Sucks.
Go Colbert! As wacky and wierd as he is, I’d vote for him.
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