GeekUtils

Through feedback through some of our loyal users, we’ve gotten some information that we wanted to share regarding using our apps on Jailbroken Phones and/or through network connections that use proxy servers:

Proxy Servers: A couple of users have reported that when they are using our app via a connection that utilizes a proxy server that they can see the listings of videos, but none of the videos will play. According to these users, when they select a video – the image in the top of the detail view that normally shows the play icon instead shows a “unavailable” icon similar to what we have discussed before in this blog. This is due to a limitation on the YouTube player within the phone itself and is not a result of something in our application. You would also find that if you went to the built in YouTube app, you’d see the same result. Please make sure your connection is not utilizing a proxy server otherwise you may not be able to play videos on the phone.

Some public wifi hotspots automatically use proxy servers – places such as restaurants, hotels, and many public wifi hot spots in a work environment. It is also not uncommon to use a proxy server specifically to prohibit access to a site such as YouTube. For this reason, please make sure your connection is free of proxy servers and the built-in YouTube app will play videos normally prior to contacting us for support when video playback fails.

Jailbroken Phones: Of course, many people out there are using Jailbroken phones – this is no secret. As most people know, these phones can usually not only download apps from the App Store, but also from third party sources. Just the process of jailbreaking a phone introduces issues with YouTube and other built in features of the phone. We cannot possibly support all of the potential configurations of jailbroken phones, so we recommend that if you have a jailbroken phone, and you experience trouble using our app, you investigate all potential third party add-ons you have installed to your phone prior to contacting us. We also ask that you disclose that your phone is jailbroken when you contact us. As for our app, we know it’s stable and works 100% of the time on a standard iPhone or iPod Touch. If you are experiencing troubles using the phone’s built-in YouTube player, our app will not function. We use the very same player that is built into the phone – so please do not contact us if the native YouTube player on your phone will not play.

There are also many other “third party” plugins that cause issues on jailbroken phones and are also unsupported. Safari Download Manager, and Safari Download Plugin are two such apps that cause issues with pretty much any form of streamed or downloaded media. We never endorse jailbreaking your phone, and this is especially true if you are a casual user without much knowledge of how the iPhone actually works. Additionally, we do not have access to a jailbroken phone for testing, so please keep this in mind prior to contacting us for help through our support e-mail address.

We can try to help as much as possible – but the two items listed above (Proxy Servers and Jailbroken phones) so far represent the cause of issues that have been reported to us. Thanks for reading!

if you are having issues with the app or have a question you’d like to ask us, a suggestion you’d like to make, etc,  please use the “About” tab in the application to send us a mail.  We’ll address your question/concern/suggestion as soon as possible!  As always, please try to contact us and give us a chance to help prior to leaving negative feedback in the app store.

So far – a couple of questions have come up that we’d like to address:

• Question: “I noticed that my favorite blogger posted a video tonight and then blogged about it.  When I went to the mobile web view, the thumbnail never appeared and it had a play icon with a line through it.  I decided I’d try to play it through the video player for their channel, but it was not there.  What gives?”
• Answer:  YouTube does not make content available to mobile devices at the exact same time a video is uploaded to their systems.  When a content creator uploads a video, they typically upload it in the highest resolution format possible (High Definition for example) – and then YouTube will convert that video into suitable versions for connections of varying bandwidth capabilities.   If you have ever cut video before, you know that this conversion process takes quite some time.  This is especially true if you are getting thousands of new uploads every day, every hour, maybe even every minute.  The mobile browser basically shows the same exact content on the blogger’s full web page, just in a “per article” form.  Because of this, the links that are embedded for the content they upload will appear.  If the mobile version of that content has not been generated by YouTube, you will see the play icon with a line through it, and the video will not play.  Be patient, the video will show up as soon as it is available in mobile format.  As for this not showing in our streamlined mobile video list, we already take this into account.  If the video is not available, we do not display it until it is available.  Therefore, as soon as the mobile version is ready – it will appear in the video listing views.
• Question : “Why is YouTube playback so slow – I think there is something wrong with your player!”
• Answer : Fortunately for us, it’s not our player nor is it a problem with your iPhone or iPod Touch ;).  Our application uses the same exact player that the built-in YouTube application does on the iPhone/iPod.  We posted a little earlier ago about how YouTube seems to be suffering from growing pains during the evening hours over the past few months.  You will find that if you stream the same content on multiple devices and even a full desktop computer from YouTube in the evening hours, you will experience slow load times,  stuttering, and other bandwidth issues.  We hope that they upgrade their capacity to support all of the new high definition content they have promised the masses – because right now, their pain is obvious to even casual users.  One of our customers has offered the suggestion to turn wireless off and go back to 3G service when this happens.  While that seems counter productive, it actually works in most cases because the mobile videos are much lower bandwidth, and lower resolution, and can therefore stream through heavy traffic easier.  Unfortunately, this is not a solution for iPod users – but let’s keep our fingers crossed that YouTube solves these issues soon!