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Why would I want to mess with using a web browser for video in my living room, probably getting hassled over its (lack of) digital restrictions management lockd

Why would I want to mess with using a web browser for video in my living room, probably getting hassled over its (lack of) digital restrictions management lockdown, signing into a Google account with all of the surveillance pwnage that implies, ads (including ads for senile political ragebait) plastered all over my experience, while becoming dependent on a UI that can change at any time, likely to demand money? Youtube is a step back in experience, something to be suffered when the thing you want to watch is only available there (ie network effects). Meanwhile, Babylon 5 has been free ~forever on torrents.

serf 9mo ago
okay, then be happy there will be some new injected life into the fandom or re-read the release as "B5 now available for download via YT-DLP for free!"
- mindslight 9mo ago
  Sure, there is value to corporate top-down synchronization telling everyone to focus on a specific piece of media at the same time. I wasn't really complaining about that. In fact it would be interesting if we could recreate the effect some way in a more distributed culture. But no, in my experience yt-dlp no longer just works unless you make your identity legible to Google (eg naive residential IP or supplying a logged-in session cookie).
  - pwg 9mo ago
    > But no, in my experience yt-dlp no longer just works unless you make your identity legible You need to upgrade your yt-dlp then. The newest versions still work without any session cookies or other such nonsense.
pwg 9mo ago
> Why would I want to mess with using a web browser for video in my living room No need for all that. Just use yt-dlp (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp) to download them as video files, and then just play the video files as you would any other video file. Just tested yt-dlp on s1e1 to verify it worked, and it worked perfectly to download the video.
- mindslight 9mo ago
  Nope. > ERROR: [youtube] Y235YEQstLo: Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot. Use --cookies-from-browser or --cookies for the authentication. See https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/FAQ#how-do-i-pass-cookies-to-yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/FAQ#how-do-i-pass-cook... for how to manually pass cookies. Also see https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Extractors#exporting-youtube-cookies https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Extractors#exporting-y... for tips on effectively exporting YouTube cookies That's the latest version of yt-dlp, just downloaded. I tried from two different IPs, both actually also having signed-in Google sessions (so not even really trying to hide). As always with the surveillance industry, your experience may vary. I'm sure there are workarounds - less-hassled IPs you can get access through, etc. The point is that going for the straightforward libre software solution lets you avoid playing any of those constantly-churning games to begin with. It's much nicer to use software systems that straightforwardly work in your interests, rather than having to trick adversarial systems.
  - pwg 9mo ago
    Interesting, that's not my experience at all. So they are doing something different for you and/or your IP address vs. mine.
    - mindslight 9mo ago
      For sure, this is why my original comment said "make your identity legible to Google". They're apparently happy enough with the identity signal of your specific IP, but they most certainly no longer allow general anonymous access. Reddit has not been generally publicly accessible for quite some time, and imgur even longer. Reddit at least still seems to work through TOR (no idea about imgur or Youtube). The "AI" bot scare has really kicked the surveillance lockdown into overdrive. These days I get hassled merely trying to browse online stores. Like their goal is to advertise and sell things - yet they somehow care if it's "to a bot" ? rolls eyes.
  - simoncion 9mo ago
    Try the '-4' flag. YouTube pretty consistently flags me as a bot when yt-dlp hits it over IPv6, but doesn't (yet!) do so when it's done over IPv4.

serf 9mo ago

okay, then be happy there will be some new injected life into the fandom or re-read the release as "B5 now available for download via YT-DLP for free!"

mindslight 9mo ago
Sure, there is value to corporate top-down synchronization telling everyone to focus on a specific piece of media at the same time. I wasn't really complaining about that. In fact it would be interesting if we could recreate the effect some way in a more distributed culture. But no, in my experience yt-dlp no longer just works unless you make your identity legible to Google (eg naive residential IP or supplying a logged-in session cookie).
- pwg 9mo ago
  > But no, in my experience yt-dlp no longer just works unless you make your identity legible You need to upgrade your yt-dlp then. The newest versions still work without any session cookies or other such nonsense.

pwg 9mo ago

> Why would I want to mess with using a web browser for video in my living room No need for all that. Just use yt-dlp (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp) to download them as video files, and then just play the video files as you would any other video file. Just tested yt-dlp on s1e1 to verify it worked, and it worked perfectly to download the video.

mindslight 9mo ago
Nope. > ERROR: [youtube] Y235YEQstLo: Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot. Use --cookies-from-browser or --cookies for the authentication. See https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/FAQ#how-do-i-pass-cookies-to-yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/FAQ#how-do-i-pass-cook... for how to manually pass cookies. Also see https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Extractors#exporting-youtube-cookies https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Extractors#exporting-y... for tips on effectively exporting YouTube cookies That's the latest version of yt-dlp, just downloaded. I tried from two different IPs, both actually also having signed-in Google sessions (so not even really trying to hide). As always with the surveillance industry, your experience may vary. I'm sure there are workarounds - less-hassled IPs you can get access through, etc. The point is that going for the straightforward libre software solution lets you avoid playing any of those constantly-churning games to begin with. It's much nicer to use software systems that straightforwardly work in your interests, rather than having to trick adversarial systems.
- pwg 9mo ago
  Interesting, that's not my experience at all. So they are doing something different for you and/or your IP address vs. mine.
  - mindslight 9mo ago
    For sure, this is why my original comment said "make your identity legible to Google". They're apparently happy enough with the identity signal of your specific IP, but they most certainly no longer allow general anonymous access. Reddit has not been generally publicly accessible for quite some time, and imgur even longer. Reddit at least still seems to work through TOR (no idea about imgur or Youtube). The "AI" bot scare has really kicked the surveillance lockdown into overdrive. These days I get hassled merely trying to browse online stores. Like their goal is to advertise and sell things - yet they somehow care if it's "to a bot" ? rolls eyes.
- simoncion 9mo ago
  Try the '-4' flag. YouTube pretty consistently flags me as a bot when yt-dlp hits it over IPv6, but doesn't (yet!) do so when it's done over IPv4.