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Comment by AdmiralAsshat | Hacker News Reader

Know where I can still watch both Youtube and Amazon Video? On my ten year-old Playstation 3.

Interestingly enough, my Blu-Ray player lost Youtube access at some point because the vendor stopped pushing updates and Google changed the API.

I don't blame Google, nor do I blame the hardware vendor - I don't expect my devices to receive software updates forever, and I don't expect Google to keep the same API forever either.

And yet, somehow, you could buy a TV appropriate to your country from any television manufacturer and you could receive programming from a range of different television broadcasters for seventy years.

But I also can't receive modern transmissions on that TV set, nor can I hook it up to a modern device (e.g., a Blu-Ray player that only has HDMI or RCA outputs)

iPad 1st gen built in YouTube app (iOS 5) is also out of commission. Probably cause they couldn't show ads on that API version.

I do blame Google for breaking millions of devices for what can't amount to much more than a rounding error's worth of developer time/pay for them to keep the old APIs working. I'm disappointed that people don't seem to care about backwards compatibility anymore. As a general point, not everyone out there can afford to keep buying new things when companies drop support, which is an angle that's maybe overlooked because of the relatively affluent demographics on tech sites. For me, if I developed an app that didn't have some extremely pressing need for some new API call, I'd prefer not to abandon the people who can't buy new phones every two years.

Still use mine for media streaming all the time. Great interface, no ads, free internet access.

Until Google just decides to ban older players.

what about your pc?

I actually do have an HTPC hooked up to the TV, but the Youtube add-on for Kodi is flakey, and I'm not even sure if an Amazon one exists.

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