Looks like a candidate for a greasemonkey script to me!

andylogaz

Since we're on the topic of weird youtube things, for some reason, when I go to youtube, it ALWAYS redirects to uk.youtube.com, despite the fact that I'm in the US. Has anyone else noticed that sort of behavior?

t3knomanser

This hack also works really well if your browser messes up on YouTube. Somewhere between MacAdmin at college and YouTube, the part of the page where the video should show says something like 'Flash is disabled in your browser' (its not, and we have the latest version of flash), so you can't watch videos. Unless you use this hack, and everything works out fine.

JonGold

AH. Thank you LH for that hack.

@t3knomanser: YouTube tries to guess at your IP and send you to the appropriate division of YouTube (I'm sent to the BR version since I live in Brazil). If you'd prefer to see the "global" version of YT instead of the "UK" version, use the small SITE: icon on YT (it's in the top right corner of the website) to change your preference from UK to GLOBAL.

TunaFish

@andylogaz: already one
[jake.kasprzak.ca]
created for a dif reason, but i believe same result

goodywitch

This is good, but I'd like to know how to bypass my works content filter which doesn't allow me to watch anything on YouTube (short of a proxy or VPNing to my home computer, that is).

Nogard13

Since we're on the subject, is there a way to bypass restrictions to watch videos on sites like the BBC or NBC (I'm in Brazil)?

Dodolina

@t3knomanser: Is your browser using British localisation? I know whenever I use Firefox (En-GB localisation), Google.co.uk is forced on me, as is the British version of Youtube. However, I still can't use the BBC iPlayer.

Prolific Programmer

It would be nice to know a bypass for NBC. I was using UltraSurf, but apparently they are blocking anonymous IPs too.

RevvRush

@goodywitch: Actually, the script that I mentioned in that blog post to which you posted a link is currently not working. Modifications have apparently been made to that script in addition to the changes made to YouTube's design since the time that I wrote about that script. However, I am sure that this script that was made for resizing YouTube videos could be modified so that it will work properly. And as a matter of fact, if it is only the URL redirection mentioned here that you want, the JavaScript code for a script that would perform that redirection is here in this comment. I find that when the @include directive is actually *.youtube.com/watch* this redirection is done successfully.

However, even when using a script for performing this URL redirection that works, it would not bypass these restrictions, as this trick no longer works. According to an update made to the blog post on Google Operating System where this trick was mentioned, it did not take long for YouTube to successfully prevent this from working.

Still, there are reasons one might want a script that makes these changes to the URL. As you may have seen, it was here that it was said this can be done to make videos larger. Also, videos are not immediately played when this is URL redirection is done. If there is enough interest in a script that performs this redirection, then I may take the time to make it publicly available so that it can be downloaded by anyone who wants to use it.

Jake Kasprzak