Homebrew Homebrew app [Release] ThirdTube - A homebrew YouTube client for the new 3DS.

[windows_server_2003]

Introduction
Finishing the International Olympiad in Informatics 2021, which was the last IOI for me as a competitor, I suddenly felt like coming back to where I started programming four years ago.
I hope it's not too late to bring an alternative to the now-dead official YouTube app for 3DS to the scene.
I would like to thank @Core_2_Extreme for putting immeasurable effort on https://github.com/Core-2-Extreme/Video_player_for_3DS/ and providing the code of it which is indispensable for developing this app.
Concept
Inspired by NewPipe(https://newpipe.net/), I implemented the parser of YouTube webpages to extract the important information (metadata, stream urls, comments, etc...).
The advantage of this web-scraping is the speed; compared to the New 3DS browser, the only way to watch YouTube on the 3DS now, this app is faster because it does not fully parse HTMLs or run javascripts. It does not even load css and some javascripts that are not related to the information we want to gain.
By combining this parser with the fast decoder by Core_2_Extreme, we can have a better YouTube client on the 3DS.
Apology
I usually care (sometimes excessively) about the support of older devices/OSes, but this time I decided not to support Old 3DSes.
They have lower CPU frequency than new 3DSes and, most importantly, lack the hardware decoding capability, resulting in failure to stably achieve 30 FPS in playing 144p videos, which is the lowest resolution available on YouTube.
When the video fails to maintain the supposed FPS and falls out of real time, the audio starts cutting out, which I felt annoying enough to deny the idea of "better than nothing".
Features
Currently only the very basic functions are implemented.

• Searching
• Video viewer with most of the features inherited from https://github.com/Core-2-Extreme/Video_player_for_3DS/
  Video resolution is fixed to 360p
  
• Comments (replies are not implemented yet)
• Suggestions
• Channel page (video list and channel description

Screenshots

Downloads
The app is available in .cia and .3dsx. For both formats, it is required that you have Luma3DS installed (preferably the latest one).
Binary : https://github.com/windows-server-2003/ThirdTube/releases
Source code : https://github.com/windows-server-2003/ThirdTube

Credits
In the process of developing this app, I used and referred to various code written by other people.
Credits go to :

• @Core_2_Extreme for the awesome Video player for 3DS (https://github.com/Core-2-Extreme/Video_player_for_3DS/)
  
• The contributors of youtube-dl(https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl) and pytube(https://github.com/pytube/pytube) for youtube parsing code which I referred to

Conclusion
In this kind of threads, there are always people who ask "What's the point" or say "It's way better on mobile phones". To be honest, I'm skeptical if this app could be practically useful. Maybe it's needed for chlidren who have their phones controlled tightly by their parents but have freedom on 3DSes but...
Well, homebrews need not be based on practical needs. If you love to tweak ridiculously old gadgets just because they are ridiculously old, you are probably one of us who enjoy this project.
I hope you can feel the excitement of doing usual things on weird devices.

 

[DSoryu]

Awesome! Gonna try this asap.

EDIT: Tried it and it works great! This is even better than the oficial app we had on its time, videos load fast and with zero issues so far, hopefully 3D videos are supported in the near future, is one of the main reasons to run this on the 3DS.

QR Code for FBI:

 

[MarioKartFan]

Yes! This is great!

 

[x149te]

Is possible add support youtube subs?
My tablet is broken and I am using new 3ds for youtube surfing. Slow but better than Vita (because ads).
Thanks for app
And also fast playing on rigth stick? What about 3d support?
-------
Console crashes when trying exit the app
Not all videos loading. Rickroll not loading

error] ffmpeg returned NOT success.
[video] avformat_open_input() failed -1094995529
Vid/Decode thread
0xfffffffa

 

[livid_hen]

In this kind of threads, there are always people who ask "What's the point" or say "It's way better on mobile phones". To be honest, I'm skeptical if this app could be practically useful. Maybe it's needed for chlidren who have their phones controlled tightly by their parents but have freedom on 3DSes but...
Well, homebrews need not be based on practical needs. If you love to tweak ridiculously old gadgets just because they are ridiculously old, you are probably one of us who enjoy this project.
I hope you can feel the excitement of doing usual things on weird devices.

My questions tend to get shut down and ignored because, "What's the point?". It is almost validating to know somebody else thinks this way .

 

[Deleted member 546149]

Pretty nice
The original 3ds app wasn't so swell so maybe this one is better

 

[windows_server_2003]

Is possible add support youtube subs?
My tablet is broken and I am using new 3ds for youtube surfing. Slow but better than Vita (because ads).
Thanks for app
And also fast playing on rigth stick? What about 3d support?
-------
Console crashes when trying exit the app
Not all videos loading. Rickroll not loading

error] ffmpeg returned NOT success.
[video] avformat_open_input() failed -1094995529
Vid/Decode thread
0xfffffffa

Could you provide the link of the video you can't play?
Also, if it doesn't always occur but rather 5% of the times, it may be a known issue written in the README.

 

[x149te]

Could you provide the link of the video you can't play?
Also, if it doesn't always occur but rather 5% of the times, it may be a known issue written in the README.

I understand that half time videos loading and half time not. So that time I was just unlucky.
But there another problem. Buffering. Buffering not enough fast and I have to pause video. So fast forward now imposible. And still can't exit without crash or force shut down, Cia and homebrew version.

 

[windows_server_2003]

I understand that half time videos loading and half time not. So that time I was just unlucky.
But there another problem. Buffering. Buffering not enough fast and I have to pause video. So fast forward now imposible. And still can't exit without crash or force shut down, Cia and homebrew version.

Well, I cannot immediately reproduce those bugs.(I do observe playback failure and slow buffering sometimes but they are like 5% and 15% for me, respectively)
Do you mind opening issues for each of them on GitHub for further discussion?

 

[jeffyTheHomebrewer]

Only thing I'd add is Chromecast/Cast support. From what I can understand, Cast seems to be an open thing? Like you can't see what makes it work, but you can still stick it into one of your own projects it seems.

 

[Wavy]

Congrats for the release! Works far better than using Youtube through the internet browser.

 

[windows_server_2003]

Thank you guys for providing feedback. The feature requests are now filed on GitHub issues.
Unfortunately, I do not have time for next two weeks and it will take time to implement these features/fix the bugs reported, sorry.

I understand that half time videos loading and half time not. So that time I was just unlucky.
But there another problem. Buffering. Buffering not enough fast and I have to pause video. So fast forward now imposible. And still can't exit without crash or force shut down, Cia and homebrew version.

Can you try the attached version and let me know if the playback failure improves or not. It's built from the latest commit(0dbe381).

 

[diggadybob]

Awesome! Gonna try this asap.

EDIT: Tried it and it works great! This is even better than the oficial app we had on its time, videos load fast and with zero issues so far, hopefully 3D videos are supported in the near future, is one of the main reasons to run this on the 3DS.

QR Code for FBI:

View attachment 270779

I love this its incredible

 

[x149te]

Can you try the attached version and let me know if the playback failure improves or not. It's built from the latest commit(0dbe381).

It didn't changed for me... untill I reformat SD-card. No more errors, problems with exit the programm. Now works much-much better. 32 gb with 32k cluster size. But videos still dont loading fast enough and need do pause for buffering.

 

[Deleted member 514389]

*Gets excited*

- "No O3DS" *Closes Tab*

Thats why I hate 'pro' devices and am sooooo glad Ninty brought the OLED.
(How many n3DS' sold anyways ?)

 

[MarioKartFan]

Based on release date and annual sales of all 3DS consoles, it would stand to reason that somewhere between 20 and 25 million “new” 3DS / 2DS were sold.

 

[Deleted member 514389]

Based on release date and annual sales of all 3DS consoles, it would stand to reason that somewhere between 20 and 25 million “new” 3DS / 2DS were sold.

Hmmm....
Still not most of the cake.

 

[Aheago]

*Gets excited*

- "No O3DS" *Closes Tab*

Thats why I hate 'pro' devices and am sooooo glad Ninty brought the OLED.
(How many n3DS' sold anyways ?)

The “old 3DS” is old as shit and was weak for the time it came out

what where you expecting? This is like complaining that you can’t play ocarina of time 3D on your NDS

 

[sith]

Great new app!

Thats why I hate 'pro' devices and am sooooo glad Ninty brought the OLED.
(How many n3DS' sold anyways ?)

dont really understand this argument, if they dont do new hardware you are stuck with the slower cpu and big missing features like hardware codecs so you never get good working apps, if they do a whole new architecture then the old unit still gets nothing... at least with shared architecture there is a possibility it will work, up to the limitations of the old hardware..

 

[livid_hen]

dont really understand this argument, if they dont do new hardware you are stuck with the slower cpu and big missing features like hardware codecs so you never get good working apps, if they do a whole new architecture then the old unit still gets nothing... at least with shared architecture there is a possibility it will work, up to the limitations of the old hardware..

But the problem with that is that you have to pay for a (quite expensive) new device if you want to have those faster speeds, or in the case of the n3ds, to even be able to play a chunk of games...