Major YouTube Loading Issues

[Skyhawk Delta]

So for the past month or so I have had a prety bad experience with YouTube.  In my opinion it is borderline unuseable or completely broken.  The biggest issue seems to be video loading times.

 

My internet connection is beast.  I am on Cox Communications Ultimate tier service with advertised speeds of 150Mb/s down and 20Mb/s up.  I live in Tucson, AZ.  It's actually kind of difficult to find a server that will fully handle the kind of speeds that my connection can do. 

 

http://www.speedtest.net/result/2992289036.png

 

I would consider this to be pretty much the limit of what a cable internet connectiooon with a DOCSIS 3.0 modem can do.  My Steam downloads can sometimes exceed 21MB/s (wow!).  I have no reason to believe that I am being throttled and Cox in my experience has provided extremely reliable service.

 

So I don't think my connection is a problem.  This leads me to believe that Google is having issues with managing YouTube in a acceptable manner.  YouTube Center is really the only thing that keeps me going back.  Disabling dash playback helps, but it can't fix load times.

 

Maybe it's my browser.  I run Firefox with multiple browser extensions which can cause some wierdness at times.  So from time to time when I am having issues I will switch to Chrome witn no extensions and try YouTube vanilla there.  Nothing ever changes.  Same issues with Chrome.  So my browser is not the problem.

 

So how severe is it?  I have YouTube Center set up to always play the videos at their highest resolution automatically.  Sometimes lowering the resolution just a little bit can help.  Other times, not even 144p will load.  Were it not for YouTube Center and it's ability to disable dash playback, I would not be watching YouTube at all right now.  It's not like this all the time, but usually I have issues in the afternoon/evening.

 

So this plus the fact that the sub box just completely broke earlier this week has led to me not watching any of Linus' recent videos.  I don't have the time to wait an hour to watch a 7 minute video.  I have a busy university schedule to keep up with.  While YouTube has had issues in the past I have never seen YouTube this bad for this long before.

 

Has anyone else had issues similar to this?  What has your experience been lately?  Are other people having problems or am I crazy?

[Genecidalic]

Okay first off youtube is going through puberty right now. So its having some issues (mostly emotional) anyways its just them trying to fix something that was never broken. Also google trying to force itself onto it. Ive had some pretty stupid issues with youtube. Mainly thinks like unsubbing me or just not loading. I think in time it will resolve its self but for now we just have to deal with it

[ZiggyManSaad]

I've always had issues with YouTube loading... It never loads for me. After adding in the IP block and using YouTube Dashboard, it loads faster, but it's still slow. I usually have to let a 20 minute video buffer for about 3 minutes.

[ultimatemythbuster]

Can't say I've had problems, maybe I'm just lucky.

[TymmVonD]

I've noticed too lately, I can't skip ahead or back without freezing and having to refresh. I have 46Mbps down, and even during the day when I'm the only one using bandwidth, it seems as if my internet is dead when it comes to youtube.

[Lil Chillbil]

I member when we had the good ole years, when youtube still wanted to hang out with you. its clear that youtube is growing up

 

Remember when people were amazed that they could watch this crap?