You buy the TV, Google ‘upgrades’ its software and then YouTube doesn’t work …
Did you buy a smart TV or set-top box or tablet any time before January 2013? Do you watch YouTube on it, perhaps through an app? Bad news: Google has shut down the feed that pushed content into the app. You may have noticed this of course: one person contacted me on Twitter to complain their daughter now couldn't watch an ad-free YouTube video on his first-generation iPad (that's 2010) via the YouTube app. Millions of people will be having the same experience. It's not only iPads; pricey Sony, Samsung and Panasonic "smart" TVs (with built-in app capabilities) were sold by the truckload, and the idea was that they would be the future. Mediatel forecast in November 2012 that more than 100 million households would be "smart" by 2013, and by the end of that year Samsung said the apps were used on two out of every three North American smart TVs
As people tend to replace their TV about every 10 years, there's not much chance those buyers are in the mood to update yet - especially as everything else will work, just not the YouTube app. (You might be able to access YouTube if the device has a web browser. Not all do, though.)
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