# YouTube playlist, anyone know the secret to get them to show on Tivo



## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

Does anyone know the secret on how to get a playlist to show up on Tivo? I have several of them on YouTube and am signed in to my account on the Tivo but still they never show up. 

The other items like favorites and subscriptions but those are still hit and miss. Any help would be appreciated.


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## TerpBE (Jan 23, 2003)

This can happen if ANY of the videos in your playlist or favorites are not currently available (i.e., have been deleted). Log on to youtube from a computer and look at your playlist/favorites. Some of them may say "This video is no longer available" (or something similar) in red. Delete those videos, and it should fix the problem.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

Thanks for the response but I've tried that. I basically add them on YouTube and then go to the Tivo and they are not there.


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## JohnDopp (Jul 1, 2008)

Unfortunately, this is a bug that Tivo introduced nearly a year ago and hasn't even acknowledged. Customer service seems to be completely ignorant of the issue.

It's not a matter of "Unavailable" videos choking the playlist -- that's a different bug that Tivo's ignored.

I've deleted every Favorite and Playlist. I created a new Playlist. I saved three valid videos (YouTube Featured Videos) to the Favorites, and added them to a new Playlist.

After logging in, Tivo complains that "you have no playlists".

Customer service at Tivo has taken a huge dip in quality over the past two years, and I worry that the company may be in a fatal decline. Hopefully that's not the case...


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

I once thought in order to have favorites show up on the Tivo, you had to select them _from_ the Tivo.

Alas, that didn't work either.


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## Sandi Shores (Sep 11, 2008)

steve614 said:


> I once thought in order to have favorites show up on the Tivo, you had to select them _from_ the Tivo.
> 
> Alas, that didn't work either.


Actually this worked for me, like everyone else I can't use my fav lists I made on youtube but I can make new ones within tivo, too much redundant work so I quit bothering. But it did work for me up until a month or so ago when I got tired of the hassle and went back to downloading them from youtube to my computer.

Now I just copy them to my tivo as I would any other show using pytivo.


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## bml2k2 (Feb 10, 2010)

Another issue I found today, is that certain sites seem to block their video and it causes your whole playlist to disappear. For instance, I made a Sesame Street playlist for my toddler with video that was uploaded by Sesame Street. Take that video off, playlist shows up. Also over a certain amount of video in your playlist (about 25) will not show up as well. I am fortunate to have a laptop and just add video one a time now and verify it shows up on Tivo. Kind of a pain, but I don't think it is Tivo's fault. More like copyrighting. Which is kinda dumb, because I just went and added stuff from sesame street that other people uploaded and it shows up. You would think they would rather I view it direct from them and then they can take it down when they want... But what do I know?!


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## Just_Chris (Oct 13, 2008)

My favorites have been missing for about 4 months now. Used to be there, now they are not.


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## Bonanzaair (Aug 26, 2006)

Add me to that .....NO favorites.


Bonanzaair


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

TIVO's position on internet content is that they are offering it for free and you're lucky if you get anything at all.


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## Atomic Buffalo (Nov 21, 2002)

If that's Tivo's position, then they shouldn't say they provide YouTube functionality, because YouTube without Favorites is about as useful as, say, TV without a DVR.

That's my position.


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## KansanN323 (May 5, 2010)

I have the newer Tivo Premiere XL and have not had as good an expierence as when I got my first Tivo back in '01. I was one of the many whose remote froze up and I had to pull the plug to restart (still had to do that a couple of days ago when I updated my Harmondy 880.) Then my youtube favorites disappeared. Tivo's site was no help, but this forum helped by suggesting I remove 'dead' youtube links. Then for no reason my favorites disappeared again. I had to pull the plug to reboot and that did the trick, but I really wish I could play my playlists!!! Why even have that option when there is nothing I can do to even see my playlists. I had wanted to create a string of fun videos to play in the background when friends came over.


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## LimeyInPgh (May 16, 2010)

I've noticed that Playlists don't show up unless you put something in the "description" field (which is blank by default when you create playlists)


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## James T. Savidge (Jul 19, 2010)

Greetings,

I also was having problems getting my TiVo Premiere to list my YouTube playlists, but after I made sure to put something in the description, the playlist started to show up on my TiVo and I was able to play from them.

It did not seem to matter if the playlists were set to Public or Private, both worked; but I did need to have something in the description field.

Beyond that, I did find one limitation: It appears that the max number of videos I can have in each playlist is 25. Any videos beyond the 25th would not show up on the TiVo listing of the playlist.

Good luck,

James T. Savidge, Monday, July 19, 2010


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## innocentfreak (Aug 25, 2001)

Playlists havent worked for me since I tried them. The only thing that worked was for me to add them to favorites.


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## TiVoStephen (Jun 27, 2000)

shwru980r said:


> TIVO's position on internet content is that they are offering it for free and you're lucky if you get anything at all.


That's not our position and has never been our position. A few years ago I made a point about free Internet content that's outside our control having issues sometimes that we can't always address (e.g. if a partner fails to update a feed). But we care about these features and work to address them.

For YouTube playlists, please let me know the details of what's not working (a step-by-step demonstration is good) and I'll make sure we get an engineer to investigate. Sorry for any problems.

Best,
Stephen


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## innocentfreak (Aug 25, 2001)

I will double check all my TiVos tonight but I know my main Premiere XL shows nothing under playlists even though I have a playlist named TiVo on my youtube account with several videos. These same videos do work and show up under favorites when I added them to my favorites. It doesn't show a playlist though.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

I rarely use YouTube on TiVo so I don't know when this broke exactly, but on all my TiVos it says I have no favorite videos. I have 285 favorite videos and none are listed as removed or restricted on YouTube's web site.

I originally could see my play lists on the TiVo YouTube app, but after I created a new play list on the YouTube web site (http://www.youtube.com/my_favorites) and added a video to it, the TiVo YouTube app started saying I had no saved playlists. When I delete the new playlist that I had just created on the YouTube site, then my old playlists showed up again on the TiVo.

So it seems like currently if you add a new favorite or playlist on the YouTube site, it breaks the corresponding entry on YouTube on the TiVo such that it says that it says you have no saved favorite/playlists.

YouTube recently changed the way playlists and favorites work (favorite is actually a type of play list now), so my guess is that this broke TiVo's YouTube implementation.

Favorites and Playlists (including the one I just created) show up fine on my Sony Bravia Internet Link so it can work with other devices, just not TiVo.

I'll mention my favorites and play lists are private so they can only be viewed by me, but that never made a difference.


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## lex3001 (Feb 13, 2005)

innocentfreak said:


> I will double check all my TiVos tonight but I know my main Premiere XL shows nothing under playlists even though I have a playlist named TiVo on my youtube account with several videos. These same videos do work and show up under favorites when I added them to my favorites. It doesn't show a playlist though.


I don't know how to reproduce it but it is a major pain in the butt. I have a TiVo HD and created a YouTube account just so I could get to things faster.

I have added a Rush concert video to my favorites that doesn't show up *but other favorites still do) and I also added a couple playlists and it says I don't have any playlists at all. They showed up at one point. I only have a couple videos in them. ARRRGH.


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## ShaneRobinson (Dec 10, 2010)

I was having all the same problems reported by everyone else. Here's what worked for me.

1. I went back to YouTube.com

2. Fount one of my favorite videos was now marked as "Private" so I removed it as a Favorite.

3. I added Descriptions and Tags to each of my 2 Playlists. 

4. Went back to Tivo > YouTube and (without siging out) all my Favorites and Playlists instantly showed up. The Playlists do list the wrong number of videos. Both have a (4) after their name and the first playlist only has 3 videos and the second only has 2. 

Seems the TiVo programmers (I'm a programmer) in their infinite wisdom either: can't code around YouTube videos that are not available/private; required Playlists to have Descriptions; and/or the YouTube API won't send any user data if either of the prior apply.


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## digger69 (Dec 13, 2007)

ShaneRobinson said:


> I was having all the same problems reported by everyone else. Here's what worked for me...


Same steps worked for me as well. Thanks for the tip Shane.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

I noticed YouTube no longer tells you if a video has been removed or is invalid when you look at your favorite list. The only way to tell is if the thumbnail for the video doesn't show up. So I went into my favorites list and playlists and removed all videos without thumbnails. 

The YouTube app still says I have no saved playlists or favorites. I have over 290 favorites, I don't want to go and look at every single one to see if it's private or not since there's no way to tell from just looking at the list.

TiVo needs to fix this.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Okay I went onto YouTube and moved all my favorites into multiple playlists. I then added a favorite from the YouTube TiVo app and it then showed my Favorites, though not my Playlists. Note you don't have to exit the app, simply back out to highlight My Videos and then go back to My Favorites.

I found two problems:
1. Some videos won't show up in the Favorites or Playlists, though they won't trigger the "empty list" issue.
2. Videos that don't play (removed, private, copy protected, not available in your area, etc) will prevent any videos from showing up in your favorites or all playlists (depending on where they were added). Playlists and favorites are separate so if a bad video is in your playlist, it won't affect your favorites and vice-versa. Playlists on the other hand area all linked somehow. If a single video in any of your playlists is "toxic", none of your playlists will show up. 

#2 is especially annoying since there's no way to tell what videos are private or removed by simply looking at your list. While some removed videos are missing thumbnails, private and "unavailable" videos will have thumb nails. That means going through and trying to play all your favorites/playlists.

In my case I have 280 favorites. There's no way I'm spending hours trying to figure out which are private and then repeating this every week or two as videos get removed or marked private. That's insane.


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## kimpossible (Dec 23, 2010)

I was helping a friend set up her TIVO Premiere so her son could watch You Tube videos. At first I encountered the same problems that many of you had. I could see videos that I favorited but those SAME videos would not show up if I put them into playlists. In fact, none of the playlists showed up at all.

I called TIVO and they were no help at all except that the operater referred me to this thread. I followed the advice here and added descriptions and tags to each of my playlists and made sure that none of them contained over 25 videos. I also for good measure deleted all spaces from the playlist names. That helped two of my three playlists show up. I could see all the videos though the listed video count was wrong. The third playlist showed up empty even though it had 24 videos which all played fine on the internet. I noticed that one of them had a blank description field. I deleted that one from the list and viola! the other 23 videos showed up in the playlist.

I hope this helps. Thanks to everyone who contributed advice to this thread.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

I'm beginning to think it isn't even worth the hassle of trying to get the lists to show up since the YouTube TiVo application won't display HD videos in HD (shows them as 480p or upscaled SD). With more YouTube videos going HD that's a major downside.


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## jakerome (Nov 29, 2002)

Another YouTube complaint here. I tuned in to watch the President's remarks tonight: 



 . On my TiVo the audio was stuttering to the point of being unlistenable. The video looked to be pulling the 240p stream. Blocky, choppy. Just horrid. Mind you, I have 20mbps internet.

Issues with playlists. Favorites. Search is frustrating. I keep having to log out, which is major PITA if you don't have the keyboard remote. In total, it's a terrible experience, and given all the hype we heard in March about 1 Box, a bit surprising. I thought things were going to work together well now?

All the internet content suffers from major drawbacks compared to other platforms such as XBox, AppleTV or Roku. The Netflix interface is beyond spartan, and that we can't easily search Netflix content alone is baffling. Amazon suffers fatal errors about 20% of the time, and pixelation/ blocking is all too noticeable. Video podcasts are fine, I suppose, but I'm not sure that TiVo's content folks are really doing a good job finding the best of the best for us to browse, and if there's a search there I'm not finding it.

Bottom line, without the keyboard remote TiVo is a distant 5th when it comes to accessing net content on your TV. Yet it's the most expensive by far. Frustrated 10 year TiVo fan that retired from being an advocate and now wondering why I'm still on board at all.


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## jakerome (Nov 29, 2002)

Total disaster. Went to rent a movie from Amazon tonight, and for the 3rd time in a month I had to re-enter my account info. If I didn't have the keyboard remote, this would absolutely be the last time I ever tried any net video on the TiVo. It's a total joke compared to the simplicity of Apple TV, and I almost can't imagine making a worse user experience if one tried. 

Strongly regretting buying the TiVo Premiere with lifetime, it's now obvious to me that TiVo has no interest in innovating on their platform and are merely making a show of developing an actual product to avoid being labeled a patent troll. 

Do they even try?


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## Trak (Aug 20, 2007)

Thanks to tips in this thread, I finally manged to get a playlist to show up on my TivoHD. However, I can't just hit play and have it play through the whole list, which is the point of even having a playlist. Without that, it's no different from a list of favorites, each one needing to be selected and played individually.

Has anyone gotten the playlist to not only display, but actually function like a playlist?


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## Just_Chris (Oct 13, 2008)

OK, got the PL to show up. Out of 10 only 1 shows any actual content. The rest have the (4) behind the name, and when selected show as empty. Some of those have 11, 20 or 40 vids in them. All the same, show as empty. I went through and played each on PC and they all were fine.

So, still not ready for prime time


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## Dante101 (Aug 1, 2003)

I've been trying to tackle this all day. Went from nothing showing up to only a few select things showing up (like most of you have described). The main issues seemed to be


Go to your computer, log-on to your YouTube account and make sure each playlist has a description

No more than 25 videos per playlist (this won't cause the playlist to fail, but it will only show the fist 25 videos in your list -- someone elsewhere said this might be due to a limitation in YouTube's RSS feed)

Any videos in your PL that are unavailable or removed will cause your Tivo to announce "This list is empty"
But besides all that, there is still something else that causes an "empty list" problem. Something I have yet to figure out. There are certain videos which play fine on your computer, but will mess up whichever playlist they are in (just as if they were a removed/unavailable video).

It might be a codec problem, but I don't know how to check for that. All I know is that until this gets fixed by Tivo, the only way to make a playlist work is to create a new playlist and add the videos to it one at a time, checking your Tivo after each video has been added to see if the playlist still works (and removing the problem video when the list suddenly says "empty").


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

Yeah, it's basically broken. And has been broken for over a year. That no one has fixed this at TiVo tells me that no one's minding the store. Sheesh. :down:


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## dcrowell77 (Dec 27, 2007)

Dante101 said:


> But besides all that, there is still something else that causes an "empty list" problem. Something I have yet to figure out. There are certain videos which play fine on your computer, but will mess up whichever playlist they are in (just as if they were a removed/unavailable video).


I discovered another issue the other day (on accident). I had a playlist that TiVo said was empty when it wasn't. I then tried to play one of the videos on my Ipod Touch and I got an error message along the lines of 'this video cannot be played on mobile devices'. When I removed that video from the playlist, ta-da, TiVo showed the playlist correctly.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

dcrowell77 said:


> I discovered another issue the other day (on accident). I had a playlist that TiVo said was empty when it wasn't. I then tried to play one of the videos on my Ipod Touch and I got an error message along the lines of 'this video cannot be played on mobile devices'. When I removed that video from the playlist, ta-da, TiVo showed the playlist correctly.


That makes sense since the TiVo version of YouTube plays the mobile version since that's the only mpeg4 compatible version that was around when the TiVo YouTube app came out. It would be nice if they updated it to support HD mpeg4 video.


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

But it doesn't make sense that TiVo has completely dropped the ball with regards to updating this simple app to reflect how it works today in 2011. This is a feature of TiVo, they sell new boxes touting it, and it's got so many problems that it's embarrassing.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

I agree from a user's perspective it makes no sense. My comment was from a technical perspective.


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## Dante101 (Aug 1, 2003)

> I got an error message along the lines of 'this video cannot be played on mobile devices'.


Ah, okay. That sounds familiar. I just went to look at a video I uploaded. There's a lot of options available with each video (like "allow/disallow user comments," "allow/disallow external sites to embed your video," "allow/disallow comment voting," etc...

One of the many options is called "Syndication," and its options are:

a) Yes, make this video available on mobile phones and TV. Note, the video may not be available on all devices due to copyright or licensing issues.

b) No, this video should not be available on mobile phones and TV.​
So aside from this user option, it also has that strange note about copyright issues. Strange because if there really was an issue with a certain video, you'd think they'd just take it down. So perhaps videos that are under investigation for copyright infringement are set not to play? 

Still doesn't explain why such "problem videos" cause the entire playlist to crash, though... grrr

BTW, tinkering with my own uploaded video, I discovered that a video lacking a description of its own is also seen as a problem video, and will cause your playlist to crash.


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## MelStL (Apr 18, 2011)

LimeyInPgh said:


> I've noticed that Playlists don't show up unless you put something in the "description" field (which is blank by default when you create playlists)


THANK YOU! This totally worked for me on my playlists.
I still can't get Favorites to show up, but I'm not done scrolling through the comments.
I was having problems with subscriptions showing up, but when I edited the subscriptions to list "Only videos uploaded by _______", rather than the default new subscription choice: "All videos uploaded, rated, favorited, and commented on by _______" -- everything shows up properly, now.
Someone at TiVo should know how to troubleshoot all of this, or at least have a Google/YouTube FAQ help-detail!


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## Dante101 (Aug 1, 2003)

Yep. Tivo really needs to fix this. They use this feature as a major selling point, but seem to neglect its many problems. I can appreciate the fact that certain videos can't be viewed due to legal reasons or options selected by the uploader, but a video lacking a description, for example, should not cause a video to fail to play (and sure as heck should not cause the entire playlist to appear blank).

There are problems with how the Tivo deals with YouTube's feed that need to be addressed and fixed.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

Dante101 said:


> Yep. Tivo really needs to fix this. They use this feature as a major selling point, but seem to neglect its many problems. I can appreciate the fact that certain videos can't be viewed due to legal reasons or options selected by the uploader, but a video lacking a description, for example, should not cause a video to fail to play (and sure as heck should not cause the entire playlist to appear blank).
> 
> There are problems with how the Tivo deals with YouTube's feed that need to be addressed and fixed.


FYP. I don't believe YouTube gets any higher billing than any other web enabled video provider.


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## Dante101 (Aug 1, 2003)

Well, if you go here and click "see the chart" it shows the different areas where Tivo has its strengths against Apple TV, Google TV and Cable DVRs. And the ability to watch YouTube videos is the first feature they list under "Web" (one of only 3 web-features listed).

So I dunno. Seems to me like they're hyping it as a big deal...


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## k2boardfan (Apr 30, 2011)

I believe the problem is on the YouTube side...

The creator of the video needs to set the "Syndication" on their video to allow mobile and TV.

I was having the same problem (playlist would show as empty) with a video I created. As soon as I changed the syndication setting on the video it showed up immediately through TiVo.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

k2boardfan said:


> I believe the problem is on the YouTube side...
> 
> The creator of the video needs to set the "Syndication" on their video to allow mobile and TV.
> 
> I was having the same problem (playlist would show as empty) with a video I created. As soon as I changed the syndication setting on the video it showed up immediately through TiVo.


The issue isn't that some videos don't play, it's that if any of the videos in your favorites or other playlists aren't allowed to play on the TiVo then none of the videos in the list will show up. That's definitely a bug on TiVo's end.


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## richardc1983 (Apr 30, 2011)

Hi from the UK!!!

TiVo has just come out on Virgin Media over here... many teething problems for a premium product that they are selling £150 for the box and monthly subscription and allsorts of problems!

This youtube thing needs to be sorted out... everyone is complaining. The sales literature said you could watch your favourites and playlists on youtube!! Doesnt even work


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

Still broken. Over TWO YEARS later. What a joke. That TiVo can't even get this basic functionality working, to make the YouTube-TiVo integration actually useful, is pathetic.

I have cleared out all "expired" (ie: removed, private) videos from my playlists and favorites.

I still am presented with empty lists every time I check. 

Having to manually search for videos I intended to watch is a major PITA. Means I end up not using the feature at all. Sheesh. Who's minding the store, TiVo?


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

In addition to my previous attempts at contacting TiVo about this egregious bug, today I emailed [email protected].

Seems she's pretty active at Twitter, is the "Vice President, User Experience" at TiVo, so maybe she'll be able to shed some light on this 2 year old bug.

https://twitter.com/#!/tivodesign


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## eaglemount (Aug 3, 2011)

@FoFer - Have you heard anything back from margret yet?


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

No hard details to share - just that they're aware of it and are working on a solution. 

My AppleTV supports YouTube playlists now (as does my iPad and iPhone) so I'm not really using the TiVo for any YouTubing any longer.


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## vanclute (Aug 4, 2003)

Sadly, I'm adding my voice to the throng. I don't personally watch much stuff on Youtube, but my gal loves to queue up her playlists of favorite musicians and let them stream as background. I've been using our PS3 and PlayOn to do this and it works OK but not great. I thought TiVo would finally be the REAL solution, as normal Youtube viewing is pretty much flawless.

Alas... no playlists would appear. I gave them all descriptions and they appear, but all say (4) next to them and then "The list is empty" inside. No content... can't play a damn thing. Pretty pathetic since so many other platforms/devices have no problem with Youtube (or certainly FEWER problems by far).

This isn't a dealbreaker for us having bought 2 new Premiere boxes this week, but we certainly were looking forward to her having a better experience with YT on TiVo.

Side note - PlayOn can (only) play up to 50 videos in a YT playlist, so the 25 video issue is not a hard limitation on the YouTube side.

TiVo, proper handling of web-based content is important to people these days... please put some resources on addressing this sooner rather than later.


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## EdR (Oct 19, 2003)

I've been through this thread and have gotten a lot of good tips on getting Youtube favorites, subscriptions, and playlists to show on TIVO. I finally got playlists to display, but only one had any content showing. 

I deleted everything and created a new playlist that showed up fine. I then created a second playlist with a few of the SAME videos as the first. Both playlists show up, but only the first shows any content.

So, is it possible to display more than one Youtube playlist on TIVO?


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

No, it's all very broken and has been this way for over two years. I wouldn't bother futzing with it. Even if you get it to start working, it'll stop working inexplicably a bit later.


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## bigbopper (Feb 23, 2005)

TiVoStephen said:


> That's not our position and has never been our position. A few years ago I made a point about free Internet content that's outside our control having issues sometimes that we can't always address (e.g. if a partner fails to update a feed). But we care about these features and work to address them.
> 
> For YouTube playlists, please let me know the details of what's not working (a step-by-step demonstration is good) and I'll make sure we get an engineer to investigate. Sorry for any problems.
> 
> ...


If you read this thread you should see the problems. Youtube on Tivo is not an application, it is a virus. I am SOOO disappointed in this. Once I finally got SOME videos to show up, they only play in 480p. If I click on an empty playlist, my Tivo locks up. I've spent a lot of money to get this capability and Tivo is the obvious bottleneck.


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

YouTube's been broken on TiVo for over two years now. This playlist bug is ridiculous and TiVo's inability to fix it is pathetic. 

I've moved on and now don't rely on TiVo for anything other than DVR'ing broadcast TV. It's certainly not the "one box" they market it as -- it's just a DVR, nothing more and nothing less. Tis a shame, but that's the way it is.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

Well, so far it seems that the new YouTube app is working just fine with playlists. I'll have to get used to the new interface but so far I like it. 

Edit: the new app is painfully slow.


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