this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
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Well the player and its controls are client side.
I'm not talking about the player or the controls being server-side. I'm talking about the player being locked into a streaming mode where it does nothing but stream the ads. After the ads are streamed, the player returns to normal video mode and the server sends the actual video data.
This means no metadata about the ads are required on the player side about the ads.
Sure you can hack the player into not being locked during the streaming of the ads. But that won't get you very far, since it's a live stream. You can't skip forward, because the data isn't sent yet. You can skip backwards if you'd like, with what's in the current buffer, but why would you want to? You can have the player not display the ads, but that means staring at a blank screen till the ads are over. And that's always the case, one can simply walk away during the ads.
Technically I can think of several ways to implement this, without the client having meta data about the ads. And with little to none ways of getting around the ads. Once the video starts it's business as usual, so it doesn't impact regular viewing.
I just read your list and it confirms mine.
Small buffer AND can't skip ahead on a boring video because you can only get served the ads to unlock further video after time equal to the served video duration has passed.
That is not YouTube, it's online TV and there will be an impact on the product. Preloading a video via a 3rd party client will still easily beat this scheme. Just get a headstart equal to the first ad break.
No, you misunderstand. You get seconds assigned to your token. It doesn't matter where in the video you use those seconds.
So if you watch an ad you get say 60 secs of video until you need to watch an ad again. You can watch 30 secs, then skip 2 minutes ahead and watch another 30 secs, then you get an ad. In reality the times would be larger, but to illustrate a point.
In the current setup YT uses, if you watch an ad, watch 2 secs of video, then skip ahead of the next adbreak, you get more ads.
And yes as stated, a separate client can get around this. But as also stated there will always be ways around it, it's just a matter of making it harder. If it's beyond what a simple browser plugin can do, it's good enough. And YT has been banning 3rd party clients anyways, so that makes it even harder.