newBBie.com

Kelly, another excellent post.
I hadn’t tried YouTube mobile on my 8130 until I read this post, and yes it does work great.
I had given up on YT m when I had motorola Q, I would get an error message that the file format was not supported, and most likely cause it had to be streamed, which the Q didn’t support anyway.
Now I know what I can do with my idle time between taking calls at Verizon

Hi Kelly,

Thanks for the info. Have you seen any recommendations for how to get Flash web sites to run on the Blackberry 8130? (Or heard any news about upcoming support/downloads?) While YouTube has clearly set up a good alternative, most other new media sites are still inaccessible.

Christine

Christine,
Flash movies won’t run on the BlackBerry 8130 (or others) at the present. There has been a rumor that Flash support has been under development by Research in Motion (RIM). For example, see here: http://www.blackberrycool.com/2007/06/11/004805/. Not strong evidence, nor very revealing evidence. But still, there is hope.

Thanks for leaving a comment.
Kelly

Is there any way to setup the 8130 to watch videos in fullscreen?

jadam,
Yes. When a video starts up in the Media Player, press the Menu (BlackBerry) key to get a menu. In that menu you can select “Full Screen.” That’s all there is to it!
Kelly

Kelly, when I pressed full screen it got rid of the timer and player but the video stays the same size. Any ideas? Thanks

jadam,
Actually, you’re right and I didn’t take full notice of that. All my videos, whether shot with my phone or imported from my computer, stay the same size, too. It LOOKS better with the media player controls, but it doesn’t get any larger. So, as far as I know, “Full Screen” really means “Hide Media Player Controls.”

Now, I notice that some of my videos have different heights and widths (originally, by design). So, one could use special software to create or modify a video to fill more of the BlackBerry screen. But that’s a lot of work. I know you want a button that just “does it.” Doesn’t look like there is one for us.
Kelly

Kelly,

I visited the YouTube Mobile page today and I received an error message when my 8130 attempted playback. It stated “The media being played is of an unsupported format.” Do I need to change a setting for the videos to play properly?

Brian,
I have seen that occasionally, too, but don’t fully understand it. When a YouTube Mobile search gave me multiple “hits,” I just picked a different hit and it played fine. The “unsupported format” problem was bad before “something changed” that prompted me to post this article. I know from converting lots of video files for my cell phones that there are a number of parameters to be set (e.g., frame rate), and that if you stray too far from “proven” values, video files don’t always play right on a given device. Perhaps some of the YouTube Mobile videos were converted with a setting that triggers the “unsupported format” message on an 8130.

If you would give me a search string that leads to one of the problematic videos, I’d like to see if it repeats on my phone.
Kelly

Hi Kelly,

I was so excited when I read that youtube now works on the Pearl HOWEVER before I could fully celebrate i realize i’m one of the few having that “The media being played is of an unsupported format”! I tried atleast 5 different random videos and same thing..

So here’s my conclusion:

1) Maybe this only works for Verizon BB Pearl? (I’m with Telus)
2) Myabe this is only meant for USA? Since youtube is Amercian i believe?
3) Maybe i’m just doomed to never watch youtube on my phone??? lol

Please help!

YouTube worked on my phone for about a week. On 2/20 it stopped working. Is this happening to anyone else?

@sn,
Possibly something has changed, or possibly my article is flawed in suggesting that YouTube is working better. Looks like I need to investigate further when I can make time. Stay in touch, please.
Kelly

@Jarrod,
I’m wondering, too, if something is wrong at YouTube. As I said in my reply to “sn” above, I think I need to investigate when I can make time.

Any input from any of you other readers out there would be very helpful. How is YouTube working for you? Please give as much info as you’re willing about your phone (if not 8130), your wireless provider, etc.
Thanks,
Kelly

just got my 8130 tonite……you tube is working fine
only 1 video so far will not play…….

unfortunately i did everything with opera mini first -videos would not play-and then i read the rest of the blog and went to the blackberry browser and went through the motions again……….

very cool…..thanks for the detective work Kelly

Yeah.. I’ve got a Telus blackberry 8130 pearl, and I haven’t been able to get youtube or any online videos to play. If somehow someone finds news or a solution, and is bored enough to tmb, wanna gimmie a shout? Inuyasha_freak_74 AT Telus.blackberry.net.

Hi Kelly,
I saw the news too about youtube videos working on the blackberry pearl 8130, I can’t play any of the youtube videos in my BB pearl, every time I try I always get this message “an unsupported format”.
I don’t know what to do to play youtube videos. By the way my carrier is Sprint.

@Andy,
Yeah, it pays to read the whole story, doesn’ it? I, too, wish Opera Mini would play the videos–maybe a future release. I’m glad to hear you’re having success playing most videos. If you read the comments above yours, you’ll see that some are reporting problems. It’s uncertain at the moment why some 8130 owners are having problems. I’m glad to hear you’ve had good success except with one video.
Kelly

@Shelby,
Sorry you’re having problems, but you’re not alone. It has been suggested that YouTube Mobile has been working better for Verizon 8130 owners, but that hasn’t been confirmed. I hope to discover more when I can make time to investigate.
Kelly

@David,
The picture is becoming clearer that YouTube Mobile is NOT “working great” with the 8130. It’s obviously working better for some than others. Is it working better with Verizon? That’s not proved yet. Stay tuned.
Kelly

Hello again, all…

I’m not sold on this issue being just provider-specific… Like David, I’m using an 8130 with Sprint — only I’ve been able to view every video I loaded with one exception. (This “one exception” actually required a soft-reset to get back on track, but I’ve had many more successes than failures so far.)

@David – I wish I could offer a few pointers, but all I did was navigate to YouTube and click on a video :-/

Go figure.

-Sean

P.S. Kelly – yeah, I suppose the word “great” in the title was a little optimistic

Sean,
Thanks for your follow-up to help me get this story straight. I hope to post some new information this weekend. At the moment, it looks like YouTube Mobile sometimes works “great” and sometimes “not so great.” So, what does that add up to? “Occasionally great?” “Inconsistent?”
Kelly

@ALL READERS,
Please consider my request to test YouTube Mobile videos yourself and report back details including the information I noted. This is a kind of testing that simply isn’t practical unless a bunch of “randomly chosen” people partcipate.
Thanks,
Kelly

I had the same problem with you tube mobile and found the problem in a forum in the media player go to options and at the very bottom is an option for audio boost make sure that it is turned off if it is on you will get the error and it will not play

Jason,
I’ll have to try that. Why that setting should matter makes no sense to me. Are you sure that fix will “hold” for a length of time? I ask because I saw great performance on YouTube Mobile for a while…only to later see worse performance. There seems to be some “random chance” involved in what kind of performance you see.

Thanks for sharing this interesting info!
Kelly

POSTSCRIPT: Jason, My “audio boost” has been turned off during my testing, so that option (being “on”) could not explain my problems. I suspect it was just coincidence in your case that your videos played better after turning that option off. Time will tell. Kelly

I got my 8130 on 2/21 and You Tube videos played fine for me the first two days I got the phone then stopped suddenly.

Here’s my report:

1) Verizon
2) -87 dBm
3) Format error

Quetee02,
How odd, but somewhat consistent with what I’m now seeing and hearing about. There are so many points in the communication path where something can go wrong. One would normally look at the path between the cell tower and the phone as being the most vulnerable to error. But the wireless provider’s WIRED network is also vulnerable. As you may know, streaming data has no guarantee of reliability like non-streaming data does. So, congestion or dropped packets in the wired network possibly could result in problems that cause the phone and its media player to just give up and report “format error” for lack of a better understanding of what’s wrong.

Thanks for the concise and detailed report.
Kelly

I figured out what it was: I had to turn my media player’s audio boost off:

http://www.blackberryforums.com/general-8100-series-discussion-pearl/115648-8130-browser-question.html

Now it works again!

Quetee02,
I’m not sure what to say. It’s obvious that many people are seeing an improvement after turning off the audio boost, as evidenced by the BlackBerryForums post and by comments left by you and Jason (comment #23 above). But I have never had my audio boost on and I’ve still seen problems. My comment to Jason (above) was that I thought this was a coincidence.

If you learn anything new, please let me know. Thanks for returning to give us an update.
Kelly

Kelly,

I’m not sure what is different from before, but the videos I couldn’t view are now playing. I have not changed any settings, I am sitting in the same spot, and I haven’t installed any new apps. So I don’t know what happened that all videos work now, but I’m very excited that it did. I’m running my 8130 on Verizon’s network on OS 4.3.0.60. Hope this info somehow helps someone find out why it isn’t working for everyone.

Brian

tried your suggestions with youtube on my 8130 – never got it to work – keep getting the same error “error trying to render the page”

joe,
Thanks for the report, although I hate to hear it. I’ve never seen or heard of that particular error message. Are you sure you’re surfing to YouTube Mobile (m.youtube.com) and not the regular YouTube (www.youtube.com)? Make sure you’re trying the Mobile version! Let me know if you have any success. It really SHOULD work at least as well as it has been for most of us.
Kelly

P.S.–If it continues to fail, I’d like to know who your wireless provider is.

kelly i have a bb pearl 8100 from t-mobile will this work with my phone????

emodude,
It’s not working perfectly for me or any of my readers (at least consistently), so I’m guessing you’re no better off. The best answer I can give you is to just try it: use your BlackBerry browser (not Opera Mini) to go to m.youtube.com and try it yourself. Be persistent because sometimes it works OK, others not so OK. Let me know what happens.
Kelly

my phone 8320 always says that i need to update mu flash player but everytime i try it it say that it doesn’t reconize my phone operating system whet should i do

vicente,
No BlackBerry–not the 8320 nor my 8130–is compatible with the Adobe Flash Player. A Flash player has not been written (yet) for the BlackBerry operating system. All of us BlackBerry owners are sad about that. You cannot install or update a Flash Player on a BlackBerry. Maybe sometime in the future, but not now. Sorry.
Kelly

yeah, im with telus and i got my bb pearl 8130 for christmas and none of the videos i have tried worked with little to full connection

Thanks Kelly for your support, I can’t seem to find the media player’s audio boost option, can you guide me were to find it?
I am having the same problem (The media being played is of an unsupported format) BB 8830 with Sprint, I tried M.youtube.com

Jay,
Do Media > Music > Menu Key > Options. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and you’ll find Audio Boost. BTW–I don’t think turning off the Audio Boost truly “fixes” YouTube Mobile. I’ve always had mine off and I’ve had periods of both good and bad performance. I really think it’s tied to signal strength (well, communication errors), but I may be wrong.
Kelly

Maybe this is obvious to most Blackberry users, but it took me a couple minutes to figure out (just activated a Sprint 8130 yesterday): you need to check the “Support Embedded Media” option in the browser configuration options screen. Browser>Options>Browser Configuration>click “Support Embedded Media”

YouTube mobile didn’t work until I changed this option.

Seth,
You got my hopes up, but, alas, that didn’t fix it for me. It’s still hit-and-miss. After changing the setting you mention, my first attempt gave the old “supported format” error (”Cat of 1000 Faces – Episode 1″). Then I played two other videos without error. I keep thinking it’s more related to signal than format, but it’s impossible to say conclusively at this time.
Kelly

well im a person who believe he knows his way around a blackberry and i have the t-mobile pearl and i can’t get youtube mobile to work blue apple works alright but some videos are hard to find on blue apple

what can i do to get it to work i get an protocol error message before the videos is done downloading and before some even get a chance to start

benjamin,
I wish I had the answer to your question. I’m at the point I don’t think there’s anything any of us can do to our BlackBerries to MAKE them work with YouTube Mobile. I strongly suspect that something in the network and/or programming of the phone (e.g., OS or Media Player) needs to be changed to make the streaming media work adequately. I don’t think it’s a setting, I think it a design issue. Time will tell.
Kelly

I was just wondering, Last night i did the upgrade like you said in your other blog kelly, Work perfect no problems, Then download the bphone theme and and left a donation to the creator. For bphone theme i use the ota method to get it, got the link and downloaded it on my phone using bb web browser now i got the theme yesssssss! Use my bb for a quick youtube mobile vid, and everything ran like a chram. Went to sleep a happy man. Woke up in the morning went to use my bb web browser and could not connect to any website. Hmmm, is it just me, or is anyone else having this problem from time to time. Anyways enjoy your blogs kelly keep up the good work.

Jasra,
I know that’s disappointing to wake up and your BlackBerry isn’t working properly. Is it still not working? I would try pulling the battery, waiting, and replacing the battery. See if that clears up your problem. Please let me know how it works out.
Kelly

kelly,

on my bb pearl 8100 it say “the protocol specified is not supported by the handheld. please try a different url.”

wat does this mean??? does it mean i cant watch any type of videos on my bb ?

emodude,
No, it means that the link you clicked on attempted to stream a video that was not intended for a mobile device. Maybe you were browsing YouTube (www.youtube.com) instead of YouTube Mobile (m.youtube.com). Streaming videos not intended for mobile devices will NOT work with our phones. Use your BlackBerry Browser to go to m.youtube.com and maybe the video will work for you. Even YouTube Mobile isn’t working perfectly right now for many of us, but sometimes it works great.
Kelly

Kelly, I’ve argued with RIM reps and even went into the store and showed one of them that the showroom model played youtube and mine did not. They were astounded. Came home pissed to say the least because youtube played when I first bought the darn thing and does not now. Read this post, immediately scrolled over and turned my audio boost off, and vwalla….it worked beautifully.

Thanks to you, jason, and the rest of the folks on this site.

Chris

Chris,
I’m glad that trick worked for you. Audio Boost on/off doesn’t make any difference on my phone. If it CONTINUES to work for you for a significant length of time, would you please return and let me know. I’ve been claiming the Audio Boost fix is coincidental, not a fix that will last. I’ve experienced periods where YouTube Mobile worked well for me, too. Then it quits. I’d love to be proved wrong about Audio Boost (but I don’t know what that would say for MY phone).
Kelly

Unfortunately I receive the “error trying to render the page” error on my Verizon 8830 World Edition phone. I am going to the mobile site, not the regular one.

I am able to stream video from CNN.com without a problem.

Also…I don’t have the Audio Boost option in my media player. I am running version 4.2.2.148 of the BB software on platform 3.0.0.67.

I too am having the same problem.

I am with telus and it gives me the error “The media being played is of an unsupported format”.

Anyone knows how to solve this issue?

Thx in advance.

I just purchased my BB 8130 about a week ago, and have not been able to get youtube mobile to work. I have tried every suggestion on this page, and have yet to be able to play a video from the site.

I have service with Telus … is it just my imagination, or does it seem as though Telus doesn’t like youtube mobile?

Sheena,
It’s certainly not you or just Telus customers having problems. I’ve tried to make clear in my article revisions and postscripts that sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I truly don’t know why it’s so back-and-forth. As soon as I learn anything new, I’ll post what I learn. So far, it’s still a mystery.

BTW–I do NOT find the Audio Boost solution a true fix for myself. Changing the Audio Boost setting to either ON or OFF has absolutely no effect on my phone’s handling of YouTube Mobile.
Kelly

Audio Boost settings have had no effect on my phone’s handling of any streaming site either. It isn’t just youtube I can’t get to play. It’s every streaming video site I’ve tried so far. I have a feeling it’s probably something as simple as a setting needing to be changed. I’m going to do some more digging.

Yesterday I happened upon a Telus press release that said something about how they didn’t offer streaming video for Blackberry Pearl yet. I don’t know how old the article was, but I’ll try to find it again.

I find it odd that they wouldn’t offer it yet for Blackberry, but would for other phones – this is what leads me to believe the press release was older. My boyfriend has the HTC touch, and he can stream videos NO PROBLEM, so I doubt it is as simple as “the service doesn’t allow it”.

By the way, I really appreciate the work you’ve put into your website. It’s hard to find first hand experiences using this particular model. It’s nice that you’ve bundled it all into such an amazing little package. It saves SO much time searching the web for error specific information. Thanks

Sheena,
Thanks for confirming that the Audio Boost setting is not a cure for the YouTube Mobile problem.

Are you saying the HTC Touch plays YouTube, or YouTube Mobile, videos well? Or both?

Thanks for the kind words about the site. It takes a lot of time but it’s encouraging when readers are so grateful.
Kelly

The htc touch still can’t play youtube mobile videos, but it can play other streaming video. It does it very well too. *frowns* I wish my blackberry could play streaming video – I love it for every other reason.

I’m going to keep at it, and try to find a solution. Also, I’m going to call Telus in the morning to see if the problem is with them, or if they can help to find a fix.

Sheena,
Thanks for the clarification about the HTC Touch.

I have a feeling this streaming video problem will get solved soon. Maybe if we all keep pushing, somebody will fix whatever is wrong. I just hope the right people are listening.

Thanks for returning to share your thoughts, Sheena.
Kelly

I just got off the phone with Telus client care, and apparently the blackberry pearl is unable to stream video with their service at this time. They are working on a fix for this.

(I couldn’t wait until morning lol)

Sheena,
Thanks for checking it out. Glad to hear somebody is working on a fix. Hope Telus shares their fix with all the over providers!!
Kelly

Kelly,

I went to m.youtube.com from my blackberry pearl(T-Mobile) and tried to play the video. No matter which video I try to play , the error message pops up saying “Protocol Specified is not supported by handheld. Please try another link “.

I tried tinytube.net , but I get the same error message.

I truly appreciate your help.

Emma

Emma,
Sorry it didn’t work for you either. I hadn’t heard of that particular error message. Must be unique to T-Mobile. Bummer.

But thanks for reporting your experience.
Kelly

ok so i come here often when i have problems with my phone… i have a blackberry pearl 8130 from verizon now.. well i went through 3 because of lost texts and call logs until YOU SAVED ME!! so i check back often and although i have never given you the credit you deserve.. i think you must know that you have ’saved’ a bunch of us… well again i started to have a problem with you tube.. tried about 15 minutes ago for the last time and nothing.. worked fine when i first got it and for the past month nothing.. and i went to media-music-options- turn off audio boost.. and once again you have saved me.. works perfectly now.. 5 minutes of reading and im happy again.. thank you

Jen,
Wow. Thanks for the kind words–that’s very encouraging.

About the Audio Boost and YouTube Mobile, some people report it makes a big difference, yet others–including myself–report that it makes no difference at all. I wish I could make sense of this. Thanks for adding some new info to the puzzle.
Kelly

Kelly,

Great blog and lots of great info! I just got a BB pearl 8130 and it won’t play any youtube mobile videos. The media player opens up and it says “loading…” in the top right corner, but nothing ever works. I’m getting a great verizon signal. Any ideas?

thanks!

Jeff,
Haven’t heard of that one before now. Try another video for mobile site and see if the problem stays with YouTube Mobile or follows the media player. That might provide a clue.
Kelly

Kelly,

I also tried tinytube.net and got the same thing. I click on the video and the media player opens, then the download arrow comes on for a few seconds and stops. no video

jeff,
Yeah, something’s not right–and I wonder if it’s more with the Media Player. Any problems playing music or videos (not streaming)? Have you tampered with any Options for the Media Player?
Kelly

Kelly,

I had the phone replaced with another one and now it streams vids perfectly! It was an issue with the media player. Thanks for the help!

Jeff,
Glad to hear you found a fix, but I’m really baffled. If it continues to work, I have to wonder if the problem is the Media Player or HARDWARE! I do hope you’ll keep me informed. If it continues to stream YouTube Mobile correctly and consistently, you may be the only person who has reported that. And your fix would be important to understand for the rest of us.
Thanks,
Kelly

P.S.–This weekend WordPress must have been having problems because I lost several comments from readers. Luckily, I get copies of their copies emailed to me, so I can reconstruct the lost messages later. Your previous message got lost, but it appears you came back and re-sent it. Thanks.

BEWARE:

My Blackberry Pearl 8130 was playing YouTube (mobile) videos perfectly until a few days ago.

Then I downloaded and installed “Videostreams for Blackberry” from Balckberry Home: http://www.mobile.blackberry.com

Not only does this “Videostreams for Blackberry” not do anything when activated, but the installation of it has done something to my Pearl because now I cannot play videos from YouTube (mobile) anymore.

Now I get this message “”A problem occurred while trying to render the page”

ANYONE ELSE?

p.s. also I was able to play streaming audio from a few websites until loading “Videostreams for Blackberry”

Rick,
That’s terrible news. I did some searching and found: (1) This service previously was launched as a for-pay service and was not successful. Some suggest it didn’t perform well. (2) There are warnings that not all wireless providers support it. Users are warned to check first with their providers.

Rick, if uninstalling Videostreams for BlackBerry doesn’t fix your phone, you may want to consider BACKING UP YOUR PHONE COMPLETELY and reloading the operating system in hopes of restoring it back to how it worked before. What a nasty situation!

Please let me/us know how you work through this problem.
Kelly

Hi,

Where can I get the flash player for my pearl 8100. Because I can’t view any video on my mobile using youtube, tinytube etc.

Thanks,
Girivasan

Girivasan,
The Adobe Flash Player is not supported on any BlackBerry. Hopefully in the future. But you don’t need Flash to view videos on YouTube Mobile, TinyTube, etc. The BlackBerry Media Player SHOULD play streaming videos from there, but most of us report having at least occasional problems getting it to work well.
Kelly

When I called to enquire with Telus about the streaming they advised me that they were working on a fix (beginning of February) when I first purchased the Pearl. They can’t be working too hard! Thanks for the info.

Cheers
KO

KO,
That kind of remark (from Telus) implies the problem is not with YouTube Mobile (as I suspected) but with the network between YouTube Mobile and our phones (as I suspected).

Thanks for this info!
Kelly

Kelly,
I recently started recieving the same error as the other Rick when I try to load a youtube video (A problem occurred while trying to render the page) the only thing is I haven’t loaded that video application that he did. I have no idea where this came from since it was working fine a few days ago.
-Rick M-

Rick2,
This has been the history of YouTube Mobile and our phones. Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails. I don’t think the problem lies with YouTube Mobile. I think it depends on network conditions between YouTube and our phones. If you keep trying, I bet you’ll see it work again (for a while).
Kelly

I tried to look @ youtube last night and kept getting “An error has occured attempting to play media” message. After about 20 tries I gave up. Anyone ever see that?

Tim,
With YouTube Mobile, the error messages vary for whatever reason. But if you try again later, it may work just fine. This has been the story for months now.
Kelly

Hi Kelly,

I realize this is covering the 8130, but just to give some more info,

I have an AT&T 8110(same as 8120 but w/ GPS instead of wifi) running BB OS 4.3.0.93 ,

When I try to access youtube mobile, I also get the Protocol is not supported – Please try another URL.

I think thats the same error mesage that T-Mobile users get too.

I’ve read somewhere that it’s a software issue and that BB OS 4.5 is supposed to natively support YouTube (don’t know first hand, the 8110 is my first BB).

I guess us GSM pearl users are going to have to wait for an OS upgrade before we get a real working solution

Cortiz360,
Thanks for that information.
Kelly

Just spent the last day racking my brains trying to solve a problem with video playback on my Pearl 8130 (Verizon.) [This may get a little lengthy, but I haven't seen this solution to the problem posted anywhere else, despite extensive Googling.]

PROBLEM: I had a number of videos saved to a 2GB MicroSD card: a mix of .MP4, .AVI (with various video codecs), and .3GP recorded with the onboard video camera. There were all working splendidly, when all of a sudden the media player just returned this error when trying to play any video:

“The media being played is of an unsupported format”

I couldn’t figure out what had changed–there was no new software installed, my memory card had over a gigabyte of free space, and the available onboard memory on my Blackberry was over 10MB. But all of a sudden, no videos would play successfully–even a new video I recorded with the camera wouldn’t play back afterward. The media player had no problems playing back MP3 and M4A audio files, and all other media like pictures and ringtones on the memory card played fine too.

I decided that something must be wrong with the media player–maybe it somehow lost the codecs needed to play back video properly? I tried it with the “Audio Boost” setting both on and off, rebooting, pulling the battery, removing and reinserting the memory card, but still got the same error no matter what. Figuring this was as good a time as any to start over, I backed up the Blackberry and upgraded the OS to v4.3.0.97. Despite reloading the entire OS, I was pretty bummed to find that videos *still* wouldn’t play from the memory card!

Time to dig a little deeper: I tested various methods of playing back video, and was interested to discover that youtube mobile worked just fine. Also, if I recorded a video and attached it to a MMS message, the preview would play back OK there. That let me to believe the problem was related to the memory card, because videos stored in the onboard memory were working.

To test the MicroSD card, I connected my 8130 to my PC via USB in mass storage mode, and the videos played back fine on the computer, so it didn’t seem like they had been corrupted somehow. Just to be sure, I ran “CHKDSK /F /R” against the removable drive and no errors were reported. What I did notice were a number of hidden files named “BBThumbs.dat” in each of the media directories (\Blackberry\videos\, \Blackberry\music\, etc.) I tried deleting some of the BBThumbs.dat files, and eventually all of them, and discovered that the videos would play back for a fleeting moment on the Pearl before showing an error message again. The hidden .dat files appear to contain information about the media in each directory– a thumbnail image at the least, but possibly more data that was somehow causing the media player to choke on the videos.

The next step would be to start fresh with the memory card. I backed up all the files to my desktop, and disconnected the Blackberry. Then on the BB, I went to Options -> Media Card -> [menu] -> Format Card. With the memory card freshly formatted, I started copying the files back from my desktop (ONLY the media files themselves and NOT the BBThumbs.dat or other hidden files), testing a few at a time of various formats.

SOLUTION!

That did it–formatting the memory card fixed video playback on my Pearl 8130! Deleting the hidden BBThumbs.dat files seemed to help a little bit, as it forced the Pearl to recreate the thumbnails and playlist information about the files on the card. However, it didn’t do enough, because it took a full reformat of the memory card to get videos working again. The Pearl seems to store some other information in a hidden “system” folder on the media card as well. Perhaps that was the key to fixing it… but either way, if you’re getting errors with video playback ONLY with files stored on the media card, it’s worth a try to back it up and reformat it to start fresh.

Leigh,
I’m so pleased that you returned to share all that information. What an ordeal! Great job troubleshooting!

There is probably what I would call “metadata” about the media files that got corrupted somehow. And it seems the metadata is used by the BB OS but is not used by your computer’s OS (probably Windows).

I just wish we could turn back the clock and learn what originally happened to cause the problem. But we may never know.

Here’s a question: How could this be related to the same types of error messages that come and go with YouTube Mobile? The same videos play one day but not the next. Maybe it’s not related at all.
Kelly

I was able to play a youtube mobile video once when I first purchased my Pearl 8130 from Verizon but now 2 weeks later I keep receiving a message that says ” A problem occurred while trying to render the page” I have no idea what this means. It happens with tinytube as well.

Jason,
We’re all having the same problem. It works one day, not the next, then works again later. Nobody knows for sure what’s wrong. We’re just hoping it gets fixed later.
Kelly

Hi all,

I had similar problem with my blackberrry 8130 . YouTube used to work initially when i bought it. My carrier is verizon.

Then after few days i dont know what changed in my phone, it stopped playing youtube videos.

I checked that audio boost that most of the people were suggesting to check. In my case it was already turned off.

Then i remembered me changing one thing to make hotmail work in my phone. Its the emulationMode in the browser configuration . Initially it was blackberry and then i had changed to it micrsoftPocketIE . Now i have reverted that back to blackberry and now

YouTube Works fine in my phone . Thought of sharing it with you all….

Praveen,
Thanks for sharing that. I’m curious to see if YouTube Mobile continues to work well for you. Every time I thought I had it working, it eventually quit.
Kelly

Hello Kelly, i have come to believe that its the Carriers/Servers/WiFi signal faulting, they say it is “Unlimited Data” but i think there are getting crammed with all the new users coming aboard, i did some wireless packet sniffing and wasn’t very surprised when i seen data packets dropping out.

I tried You Tube M and TinyTube and had the same problems as listed above in the other comments, when i had a steady stream of data worked like a charm when the packets started dropping do to signal loss or just plain data loss the videos would not load !

I also am not using a 8130 i am using a 8120 but still had the same errors hope this helps.

Kevin,
Yours is the most significant comment anyone has left that might explain what’s going on with streaming video. Ordinarily, dropped packets from a stream should just result in choppy performance, not failures of the sort we’re seeing on our phones. I think that changes to the software in the BBOS and Media Player could improve matters at least to where we could play videos with some dropped frames but not complete failures to load or play.

I’m curious–what are you sniffing with? WireShark?
Kelly

I use a few different ones Kelly but the one i used for this Test was CommView for WiFi, pretty good little tool, and to cover your comment on packet loss Ordinarily leading to just loss of stream , let me put this in perspective for you

Say you click view Video … and it wont load, well if that initial packet actually is the send request packet fails or in return doesn’t fail but fails to return the handshake packet then it would deff cause those errors, and before you say “But would this happen every time i try over n over” the answer is no it wouldn’t so what i’m going to do today is do some packet analyzing and try and do some more research on this problem because lets face it we all want to watch Videos on are BlackBerrys it’s one of the first things i tried as soon as i turned my on phone on, so i will keep you all informed on my progress

Kevin,
I love what you’re proposing to do. I hope you find something that can be used to alleviate or eliminate the problem. Or at least understand it better.
Kelly

I can confirm that YouTube Mobile works consistently on my Verizon Pearl 8130 as long as I have a strong wireless signal. In an area with weak coverage (0-2 bars and no EVDO), I got the “unsupported format” error every time I tried to play a video. It looks like the .3GP streaming works fine from YouTube’s end–it’s just a misleading error message from the Pearl’s Media Player that has been confusing us.

Leigh,
I agree that what’s coming out of YouTube Mobile is OK. Between YouTube and our phone is where something is going wrong. The only observation I’ve seen that doesn’t completely reconcile with what you’ve observed is that I’ve had sessions where one particular video played reliably well, but another failed consistently–with the same signal strength. I’ve assumed that the videos differed in some subtle encoding parameter.

Thanks for your input to this ongoing discussion.
Kelly

WHEN TRYING TO VIEW A VIDEO FROM YOUTUBE ON MY TMOBILE BB PEARL I GET A MESSAGE STATING, “THE PROTOCOL SPECIFIED IS NOT SUPPORTED BY THE HANDHELD. PLEASE TRY A DIFFERENT URL”. DOES ANYBODY GET THAT SAME MESSAGE??? WHAT CAN I DO???

Richard,
Are you trying to view YouTube or YouTube Mobile? You should be using the URL http://m.youtube.com. But as the article above states, it may work some days and not others. Whatever the problem is, it hasn’t been fixed.
Kelly

I have a blackberry curve 8310 through AT&T. Any news if Adobe Flash Player will be supported anytime soon?

Through AT&T, i was never able to view you tube even through mobile you tube. PLEASE HELP!!

Eric,
As my revision to the article says, you can’t guarantee good performance with YouTube Mobile. As best I can tell, the result is the same for everyone: some times it works well, others it doesn’t. There’s no magic solution yet to make it work. It’s probably going to take work by wireless providers to improve their network delivery of streaming video, and perhaps improvement to the BB Media Player by RIM.

And,…no word that I’ve heard about Flash Player being ported to work with BlackBerry Browser. Sorry. Everybody is waiting for that one!
Kelly

Although i wasn’t able to download on myspace, i was able to watch video through mywaves.com. It doesn’t make sense why vidioes will play on mywaves but not myspace?

woops.. not myspace, but youtube.. sorry..

turn audio boost of in the media player and videos load. I have the 8130, and learned how to view vids from this blog……………thanks now I can really kill time @ work.

Chris G,
Thanks for sharing that tip. Others have said the same thing. For me, Audio Boost has no effect whatsoever on the performance of YouTube Mobile. Wish it did!
Kelly

Hi, i have a blackberry pearl 8100 and i already load the new 4.5 os to it (found it on: http://www.vodafone.com) i am trying to load youtube mobile and cannot make it work, i dont get any kind of message, it just opens the media player but never starts, any ideas, i tried some changes suggested here, like the emulation mode change and never found the boost on my options, hope anyone can help…B)

just a thoght could it be to do with having an account

sorry i’ll finish what i was saying

could it be that you need an account with youtube

i have two blackberrys 8120s both have o s 4.5 one is working with youtube and one is’nt both have same setting so what is going on there i don’t know the only differance is that one signs me in to youtube as soon as i go on could this be the answer or am i talking rubish

pablo,
Your information is intriguing. The more I info I get from readers, the more mysterious this YouTube Mobile situation is. I’m curious to know that if you access YouTube Mobile day after day, will the same phone always work and the other phone always fail? If that holds true for a long period of time, then your phones hold a secret that needs to be revealed. Please stay in touch.
Kelly

hi Kelly,
Ive had my blackberry for about a month now, and first time I tried youtube and it didnt work, I figured the blackberry just didnt support it, just like any other cellphones. I was quite disapointed, but now that I see it works for some people, im a little more excited.

So i’ve tried a bunch of different videos, and i’ve tried the same videos a bunch of times, and none of them seem to work? I tried smaller videos, bigger ones..

Most of the time it will tell me the format isnt supported, but some other times it’ll act like the video is about to start… but after waiting for a good 10 minutes or so, the video never starts.

So im assuming, from reading all those comments, that it might be a problem with Telus?

Jennifer,
Let me copy-and-paste something I just wrote to another reader:

YouTube MOBILE (not the regular YouTube) should be able to play without Java, Javascript, or Flash. The browser basically launches the media player which understands the YouTube Mobile file format and streaming protocol. If you read my article on YouTube Mobile, you’ll know that it’s hit-and-miss with our BlackBerrys. Everybody seems to have a different experience, and it seems to change over time. Recently, I was in an area with a good, strong signal, and it played beautifully for me. Other times, I can’t get anything to play. I keep claiming it’s more an issue of signal strength and the carrier’s network congestion/performance. The media player may also need to be made more robust in the face of network errors. I feel like we’re on the brink of having it work acceptably soon.

Kelly

Hi Kelly,

I have been reading through the threads about the youtube videos. I, too, have not been able to play any videos from youtube mobile – not one! Even though you said the audio boost may not be a reliable fix, I even turned it off to see if it would work, if only for a short time – with no luck. The only difference that I noticed is that the media player would open and a green message in the upper right corner said that the video was loading. However, I received the same error message when trying to play the file.

Here’s my info if you are keeping the stats:

Provider: Cellular South
Current Signal: -102 dBm (fluctuates from -110 to -97)

I’ll try playing them again when I have a stronger signal but from my experience lately, this doesn’t affect playback either.

Thanks for all of your great advice!

Donna

Donna,
Thanks for the details. I think your signal strength is on the low side, just like where I live (a rural Georgia area). Try it sometime when you have a much stronger signal and see if it doesn’t work a lot better.
Kelly

8130 Pearl version 4.5.0.77 (Platform 3.2.0.51)
In hopes this helps others and/or to get closer to a solution I thought I would share.. I am sorry I did not read through all the reply’s so if I have repeated anyone I am sorry. I have had my phone for some time now and did upgrade the OS to the listed one above. Once I had done this you tube was working flawlessly then I had that error again. I found in my options menu while in the web browser that you can change the rendering engine. Since I have changed it to the Internet Explorer engine I have not come across this message. Not sure if this will help all of you out there but it is working for me so far. I changed the engine to IE and have been happily watching you tube since. FYI this is not the mobile version either this is www. youtube .com not sure if I can put those together or not
In a nutshell try using the other rendering engines this may solve the unsupported error.

Oh and I checked off all the boxes above but that didnt seem to affect anything by itself. The exact heading is Emulation Mode under the Browser Configuration/ inside the browser option menu after pressing the menu button on the keypad.

Lauren,
Thanks for sharing that info. Back when I was messing with YouTube Mobile, I’d change a setting and think it was working better only to find that problems came back days or weeks later. I hope your fix “sticks.”
Kelly

Lauren,
Thanks for the clarification.
Kelly

So if I am to go buy a 8130 blackberry curve. I can get youtube to work?

kat,
There’s no guarantee that it will work perfectly. If you read the entire article, you’ll see that sometimes it doesn’t work well. This article is several months old, and performance of YouTube on a BlackBerry may be better now. I believe it works better in areas where you have a strong signal. The Curve is a fantastic phone, and I highly recommend it.
Kelly

hi, i have a blackberry curve 8330. every time i go on youtube and watch a video. the videos are extremely small, so then i click menu and click full screen, and doesnt even do anything. i just got this phone a couple of days ago

brandon,
Are you viewing YouTube on the regular YT site or on the mobile YT site?
Kelly