Can't play youtube videos all of a sudden

Same problem. One thing I have noticed is that the problem for me seems to be confined to my bookmarked videos, especially the latest ones I have bookmarked. Hopefully they get this fixed soon, the YouTube app was one of my favorite thinsg about my iPod.

I'm having the same problem w/ my iTouch. YouTube was working fine up until around 11pm central time on Monday night, then all of the sudden I couldn't get any videos to play. When I tried accessing YouTube through Safari, I found that I was still getting the same "This movie cannot be played" message. But yesterday evening, I tried again and now I can play videos through Safari but the actual YouTube application is still not letting me play any videos.

This morning, I called O2 (the service provider here in the UK) and was told that there was an ongoing problem that they were working on and could not resolve yet. They could not give any details about the cause nor the expected recovery time but assured me that it was not a failure on the user's side - not a device fault. We will have to wait until they sort it out. I hope this helps (some of you ;o)

Thanks iBeundringsverdig! I was having problems playing most of the Trailer Park Boys videos. The conspiracy theorist in me figured that Apple and YouTube were censuring my access 😉 I tried your suggestion. Restored and updated as a new Touch. All videos now play.

This is why I love these forums. Smarter minds than mine can figure these things out.

WHILE I WAS BRAGGING ABOUT MY IPHONE, I TRIED TO DEMONSTRATE ITS YOU TUBE FEATURE AND GOT THE MESSAGE "THIS MOVIE CAN'T BE PLAYED". I WAS EMBARRASSED AND FRUSTRATED...TYPICALLY APPLE PRODUCTS DO NOT FAIL, HOWEVER, IT APPEARS A REAL PROBLEM EXISTS WITH THE YOU TUBE FEATURE. I NOW WONDER-WHAT WILL GO WRONG NEXT? APPLE--PLEASE HELP..

I did some further testing on this and I am getting more perplexed (see my previous post on Feb 23, 9:04 PM). When I go to the "Featured" section there have been new videos added to the list. These new videos play fine for me (32GB 2G iPod Touch). However, the videos down further in the list starting with "HUGH JACKMAN OSCARS" do not. So I tried a theory. When that Hugh Jackman video failed to play it still brings up the details with the options "Bookmark" and "Share". So I used the "Share" feature to e-mail it to one of my e-mail accounts. Then I closed the YouTube app and went into the Mail app, pulled up the e-mail that contained the link to the video from my Sent items. I clicked on it, which opens the video in the Youtube app, and....it worked!!! So I clicked on the "Done" button and selected the "Bookmark" option to add it to my list. So I go play it from the "Bookmark" list and it also worked. But when I go back to play it from the "Featured" list, it doesn't work. Bizarre!

I'm not sure why this but hopefully someone smarter than me can take this ball and run with it.

Hoped that was helpful.

I am in Ireland and have the same problem ...maybe its the luck of the irish but
Try this fix !!!!
Get the message "This movie could not be played" ..Click OK

continued ....

Scroll down to related videos and wait for them to load up

Press to play as normal....THIS WORKED FOR ME

Anyone else try it and let me know !!!

Didn't work for me.

Same with me, I watched videos on youtube perfectly before, but last couple of days they just pop up as 'video unable to play'. Kinda irritating, come on youtube.

Thank you all for your posts...I thought I was just paranoid. I just experienced this problem last evening with my iTouch 2G. I can access YouTube from the TV icon and from Safari. If I run a query through the TV icon and try to play certain videos, that message "Cannot play movie" appears. If I run the same query through Safari, it plays...strange. Someone mentioned about the software. I'll try that and see if it works. Good luck everyone!

Message was edited by: winendine820

Same problem. My problem began around the time when I received the last iPhone update. It sure seems like more than a coincidence to me. As I look through the other comments a couple questions arise for me. The first is that my 8GB iPhone is nearly full with content (less than 500MB free). When some people have reported the problem getting fixed by restoring the device to a new device, I'm wondering if less new content was being put back on the phone. I too seem to have more problems with bookmarked content.. or more specifically, content I've viewed before. It's almost as if there is cached data on the phone that is blocking new content from being put in its place. As for all the people saying "it doesn't work when I'm going through the icon but then does through safari" or vice virsa, all I can say is that my experience is very inconsistent. Certain videos seem to almost always fail- but only almost. Occasionally I seem to notice videos will play that previously didn't, but it's almost alway the other way around. A video will play at first, and I'll say, "Ah hah, at least I can play this one..." and then a little bit later it won't play either. Any thoughts about any of this?

I tried the suggestion of using the share button to send an email to myself, and then launching the video from the email. It still didn't play, but this time it says "Cannot connect to YouTube" instead of the usual "This video cannot be played".

I also have had the same problem on my iphone 3g. It was like they just flipped a switch. I also tried the restore using the new phone option and so far so good. I DID NOT do the carrier update that itunes keeps wanting me to do everytime I sync. If memory serves, I starting having the you tube problems directly after I did the carrier update during a sync. I also had updated the ebay app and downloaded the level app. So somewhere in that sync/update something seemed to get loaded on my phone. It was very sluggish and seemed to be using the battery more than usual...almost like something had been loaded in memory and was running in the background all the time. I agree about the problem being with either apple/iphone or att (carrier update) which I will never do again until someone finally admits what the problem really is, which might not ever happen. To me it is very disturbing when something like this happens on a major app and there is absolutely no solutions coming from the people to whom we are paying ALL THE MONEY! ... just the usual denial and finger pointing. Thank goodness for these forums...thank you!

Just a quick addendum to my previous post above. I forgot about the safari update that occurred just before all this you tube stuff started to happen. This might explain why it affects the iphone and ipod touch. Just some thoughts from a dumn old end user of these wonderful toys.

THANKS SO MUCH to all the people on the forum who really do know what is happening...and who are saving us yet one more time...