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Here’s a puzzler: my browser no longer plays YouTube videos. On Thursday they suddenly stopped working on both Firefox and Opera. IE still worked, though. Today, Firefox started working again, but Opera still doesn’t. I just get a big black rectangle with no controls.

Anyone know what this could be? Ad blocking doesn’t seem to be the problem. My laptop still works fine using the same browser version I have on the desktop. I rebooted, of course. I don’t recall installing or updating anything on Thursday. Other video sites still work fine. Only YouTube doesn’t work.

And here’s something else weird. When I embed YouTube videos in the blog, the normal embed codes don’t work. I just get the black rectangle. But the old YouTube embed code displays fine:

  • Doesn’t work: <iframe width=”375″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/watch/xxx”>
  • Doesn’t work: <iframe width=”375″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/xxx”> 
  • Works!          <iframe width=”375″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/xxx”>

I’ve racked my brain and I can’t think of what else to try. What did I do to anger the YouTube gods?

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