# here's a solution to a Youtube "Favorites" quirk



## tivoknucklehead (Dec 12, 2002)

I noticed that in "Youtube", "Favorites" only my first favorite vid was listed. I tried signing out and back in, but that didn't work. I went to my Youtube site online and saw the *second *favorite was listed as "unavailable" (must have been flagged) Once I removed the "bad" favorite all Favorites worked fine again with the Tivo

You must remove *any* bad favorites to fix this


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## zapster (Oct 24, 2004)

you rock, thanks for this... i was going nuts trying to figure out the problem. you saved the day.


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## rjgibson0066 (Feb 13, 2007)

tivoknucklehead said:


> I noticed that in "Youtube", "Favorites" only my first favorite vid was listed. I tried signing out and back in, but that didn't work. I went to my Youtube site online and saw the *second *favorite was listed as "unavailable" (must have been flagged) Once I removed the "bad" favorite all Favorites worked fine again with the Tivo


I was about to start a thread about this same issue. However, I don't see where my favorite vids not appearing on my Tivo are unavailable - where specifically is that denoted?

Thanks


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## dougdittrich (Feb 5, 2009)

Thank you for the tip. I had 3 "Unavailable videos" in my online favorites list. I removed them and checked the Tivo and my full favorites list now appears. Thanks.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

I have no favorites listed on my TiVo. I have around 168 favorites on YouTube. I would rather not go through all of them to find which one(s) are "unavailable", but I guess it's a work around. Thanks for the info.

I removed all the "unavailable" videos and it's working again. Thanks. 
Now if only YouTube wouldn't keep logging me out periodically.


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## rjgibson0066 (Feb 13, 2007)

I think this is my problem (found this on youtube's help)...

_Possibly because the video has been monetized...the uploader didn't
have the permission of the copyright holder to upload the video. The
copyright holder allow them to keep the video on YouTube in exchange
for placing advertising on the videos watch page...which essentially
pays for the use of the copyrighted material. In this kind of
situation, the copyright holder can choose where and how the video is
seen (disabling embedding, blocking various countries, etc...). They
can also prohibiting syndication of the video to TVs (tivo, etc...).
Which is probably what is happening here. _


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## mather (Jun 4, 2007)

Late to the party but how do I find if I have "unavailable" videos in my list? I don't see any note under favorites online.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

mather said:


> Late to the party but how do I find if I have "unavailable" videos in my list? I don't see any note under favorites online.


This problem was supposed to have been fixed by YouTube, according to TiVo, so you shouldn't need to the work around. As far as I can tell the fix is still working (at least for me)

Note that the TiVo can only play back mp4 formatted videos. As such older videos that you favorite won't show up on the TiVo even if you perform the work around.

If you still see no videos in either the "My Favorites", "My Subscriptions, "My Playlists" or "My Channel" categories, you can try using the work around. It entails going to youtube's account page and finding the appropriate link under "My Videos". Note "My Channel" on the TiVo is "Uploaded Videos" on Youtube.

Once you select a link, just scroll through all the videos and look for ones that have a "[video unavailable]" after the title and remove those.

Like I said though, you shouldn't need to do that anymore.


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## mather (Jun 4, 2007)

Thanks, I do see some of the videos, some I don't see. None show an "unavailable". So the general reason if I put a video as My Fav in YouTube and it does not show up under Tivo, is the formatting of the video? Would this also be the reason if I perform a search under Tivo and a video does not show up under the searched listing when in fact I've seen it online on the YouTube?


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

If you see some videos in the favorites list on the TiVo, but not others, then yes it's the formatting of the video. 

In May 2007, YouTube started converting uploaded videos to H.264 format in addition to Flash video format. Prior to that the videos were only converted to Flash video format. Since the TiVo doesn't support Flash video, only videos uploaded after May 2007 will show up on the TiVo.


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## mather (Jun 4, 2007)

Thanks Morac, cleared it up so I don't have to pull my hair out wondering how to "fix" it. On a similar topic, any issues w/ the Playlist under Tivo? I have a Playlist in YouTube but it never shows under Tivo.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

It could be the same thing. You can try creating list.


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## jbs (Aug 23, 2005)

Quick update here, I had the problem of no favorites on Tivo tonight, found this forum, deleted one "Unavailable" video and everything went back to normal. So as of Aug 22 2009 at least, a single Unavailable video will still cause your favorites to not appear in Tivo.


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## ejh4isu (Aug 6, 2008)

I had the same problem, with one "unavailable" video. I deleted it and re-logged on and it works fine. I'm somewhat dissipointed however that some of my "favorites" still do not work, presumably because they were uploaded in an older video format ?

Thanks for the help here, this was really starting to bother me


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

Hey, when we gonna be able to watch shows on this? I want to watch original Star Trek but can't.


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## Ben_Jamin75 (Dec 18, 2003)

Thanks to the OP! I had not seen this and thought that the favorites option just didn't work. 

Going through my favorites, I found that a video marked "private" will also cause the the same problem.


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## tivoknucklehead (Dec 12, 2002)

jbs said:


> Quick update here, I had the problem of no favorites on Tivo tonight, found this forum, deleted one "Unavailable" video and everything went back to normal. So as of Aug 22 2009 at least, a single Unavailable video will still cause your favorites to not appear in Tivo.


thanks, I edited post one to say *any* bad favorite must be removed


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## kupe (Apr 10, 2003)

jbs said:


> Quick update here, I had the problem of no favorites on Tivo tonight, found this forum, deleted one "Unavailable" video and everything went back to normal. So as of Aug 22 2009 at least, a single Unavailable video will still cause your favorites to not appear in Tivo.


Well, as of Nov 13, the bug is still not fixed. I found that I too had no YouTube Favorites displayed on my Tivo HD when logged in. I scrolled through my many Favorites on the YouTube website and found two videos that, for some reason, were now flagged as Private (including the U2 concert video that is being pitched to all Tivo HD users.)

Once I deleted those, Favorites again worked. What a PITA though- can't believe this issue causes YouTube on Tivo to choke.

Kupe


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## danhealy (Dec 7, 2009)

Sometimes YouTube doesn't tell you if the video has become unavailable, but there is a site called yuivo.com that will track your youtube favorites. It lets you know if any of them become unavailable for any reason, and then it offers alternate suggestions based on the tags.


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## tt881 (Dec 14, 2002)

As of today (Christmas Eve) this issue is still definitely not fixed. I had to do the manual "delete unavailable videos" trick just now to get any Favorites to show up via the TiVo.


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## mycltype-s (May 21, 2002)

I am not sure if there is another thread about this but here goes.

I have NO unavailable videos. But only 4 of my 13 are showing up. Dates range from 2006 to 2009.

Suggestions?


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Older videos that are not H.264 encoded won't show up since they aren't supported. If they are H.264 encoded, trying removing and re-adding them (or post one here so someone can try it).


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## mycltype-s (May 21, 2002)

Ya I thought that. But some of my videos are older and some are brand new and they both dont work. Then some old ones work. It is very weird.


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## bnbhoha (Nov 2, 2002)

none of my favorites are showing up on tivo. I can see them on the computer. All are available. Kind of sux. Any work around this?


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## pra4snw (Jul 19, 2007)

This is how I fixed it:

I found 2 videos in my Favorites on YouTube that were marked as unavailable. I removed them, but I still had no Favorites on the TiVo.

Next, I create a Playlist on YouTube and dropped in videos from Favorites one at a time, then checked the playlist on the TiVo until it said "Playlist Is Empty". I then removed the last video I added to playlist from Favorites and, bingo, they all now show up on TiVo.

Tedious, but it beat starting from scratch.


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## tivoknucklehead (Dec 12, 2002)

this happened again today, but this time I have no "bad" favorites. forget that playlist thing, that is nuts


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

I haven't had favorites for months. I don't have any bad favorites either. It simply seems that if you've added a favorite within the last 6 months or so the favorites list is blank. That's likely caused by changes in how the favorites list works.


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## tivoknucklehead (Dec 12, 2002)

morac said:


> I haven't had favorites for months. I don't have any bad favorites either. It simply seems that if you've added a favorite within the last 6 months or so the favorites list is blank. That's likely caused by changes in how the favorites list works.


its a tivo thing, not a youtube thing because all my favorites still show up on my Directv HR-20 youtube section via playon


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

tivoknucklehead said:


> its a tivo thing, not a youtube thing because all my favorites still show up on my Directv HR-20 youtube section via playon


I don't disagree, but it was triggered by a change on YouTube's end. TiVo rarely updates the YouTube application and it doesn't handle changes well. It used to crash when YouTube changed things, now it simply shows a blank list.


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## tivoknucklehead (Dec 12, 2002)

morac said:


> I don't disagree, but it was triggered by a change on YouTube's end. TiVo rarely updates the YouTube application and it doesn't handle changes well. It used to crash when YouTube changed things, now it simply shows a blank list.


if we are lucky someone from Tivo will read this and fix it


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## julesagogo (Nov 14, 2009)

I removed all the dead vids from my favorites online and added a few from TiVo directly - they all show up online but not on TiVo; nor do playlists and I cleaned those out, too. I seem to remember something a while back about certain video codecs fouling up _playlists_ on TiVo...

Oh well, my agreement is up soon and I can barely find anything decent to record anymore with the free cable gone, so I'll be looking for a solution that works (google tv probably) and putting this one on craigslist.

_Series3 ver 11.0j-01-2-652_


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## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

None of my YouTube Favorites are showing up in YouTube on my Tivo Series 3. And only some of my Subscriptions are showing up.

Really getting sick of all these issues and wish Tivo would spend some time fixing them!


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## dtdg (Sep 2, 2011)

I've been a loyal Tivo owner for over ten years, but the platform is not aging well. Problems like this where basic functionality doesn't work are more frequent. (and these days I consider being able to attach to YouTube and other online video sources to be basic) The new Tivo devices are SLOW and the UI is very laggy. 

I'm starting to research a cheap media center pc with a tv tuner card to replace my Tivo. I've paid literally thousands a year in subscription fees, and if it's not working that well then I'm fine investing a fraction of that money into an open source solution where it probably works as well and I no longer pay a monthly fee. I can get a complete media PC for under five hundred bucks. The only reason I haven't yet is the effort of changing, but last night I spent nearly 30 minutes trying to get logged into YouTube and now that I'm logged in I STILL can't even see favorites. Tivo--wise up and fix the issues or you're going to lose customers even faster than you are now.


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## MC Hammer (Jul 29, 2011)

dtdg said:


> I've been a loyal Tivo owner for over ten years, but the platform is not aging well. Problems like this where basic functionality doesn't work are more frequent. (and these days I consider being able to attach to YouTube and other online video sources to be basic) The new Tivo devices are SLOW and the UI is very laggy.
> 
> I'm starting to research a cheap media center pc with a tv tuner card to replace my Tivo. I've paid literally thousands a year in subscription fees, and if it's not working that well then I'm fine investing a fraction of that money into an open source solution where it probably works as well and I no longer pay a monthly fee. I can get a complete media PC for under five hundred bucks. The only reason I haven't yet is the effort of changing, but last night I spent nearly 30 minutes trying to get logged into YouTube and now that I'm logged in I STILL can't even see favorites. Tivo--wise up and fix the issues or you're going to lose customers even faster than you are now.


Did you do the steps provided on the first post of this thread?


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## tivoknucklehead (Dec 12, 2002)

none of my favorites have ever shown up on my Quad Elite, yet none are "bad" on youtube.com and all my uploaded videos show up. Anyone else?


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## Deinonych (Sep 28, 2007)

Excellent tip...thanks.


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## beejay (Feb 3, 2001)

tivoknucklehead said:


> none of my favorites have ever shown up on my Quad Elite, yet none are "bad" on youtube.com and all my uploaded videos show up. Anyone else?


I have some of my favorites showing on my Elite but not all. The ones that don't show have a smaller number of hits, but I have no idea if that is the issue.


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## tivoknucklehead (Dec 12, 2002)

beejay said:


> I have some of my favorites showing on my Elite but not all. The ones that don't show have a smaller number of hits, but I have no idea if that is the issue.


I fixed it by deleting on youtube some favorites that went "private"


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## RigbyPA (Dec 29, 2011)

They are going to fix the fact that you can't select individual subscriptions right?

I really hope they know how broken this is because what is the point of this app if I can't even scroll through or select the different youtube channels I subscribe to?


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## MC Hammer (Jul 29, 2011)

RigbyPA said:


> They are going to fix the fact that you can't select individual subscriptions right?
> 
> I really hope they know how broken this is because what is the point of this app if I can't even scroll through or select the different youtube channels I subscribe to?


You realize you're posting in the wrong thread, right?


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## Rose4uKY (Mar 28, 2003)

Am I in the right thread? I went to My Channel and it only shows me like 20 videos of mine then stops and won't scroll down anymore. How do I see all my videos. I tried making a playlist but maybe I need to log out and log in to see that but I don't want to have to put all my videos in a playlist or favorites to view them. I just want to go to my channel but there not all there. I just googled my problem and it took me here. Sorry if this isn't the right thread. I tried calling Tivo but it said the wait time was 20 minutes there busy.



MC Hammer said:


> You realize you're posting in the wrong thread, right?


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