The new Youtube URL youtube.com/XL hasn’t been working well at all on the PS3. The “XL” part is case sensitive and must be capitalized for it to work. Usually it crashes immediately. The rest of the time after something is typed into the search box, all you get are yellow arrows that circle around and a message that it is “loading”. Then it will crash. During these crashes no buttons on the controller or the PS3 remote work. You have to manually get up and go shut the PS3 off. I’ve also had a problem where Youtube will not let me access their  regular  website – without the fricking “XL”. I would put in the URL nomally and it would snap to the XL version. In order to get around this I was able to go there by using an old bookmark of a channel. This new interface is supposed to be optimized for use on game consoles and cell phones, I haven’t tried it on other devices, but so far on PS3 it has sucked ass badly and I have not had a single viewing experience using it. The user interface itself  is dark and ugly, and  the maroon color is horrible. It looks terrible alongside a video,  it should be all black.  Some tweaking may give you a full screen without the maroon carpet look texture, but I haven’t been able to actually see much of a video on it since all it does is lag and or crash.  I watch anime constantly on the PS3 while I am writing, and lately the XL channel has been nothing but a detriment. I give Youtube XL for PS3 a O for broken and Fail.

Update: This morning a note in my mailbox brought news that a huge black out of Youtube is planned for tomorrow, July 14. But due to videos being embedded in so many websites, it may be difficult for most people to avoid seeing something on Youtube for a day. Apparently the plans for new restrictions and interface changes have angered many Youtubers. After Google bought the popular user content site, it was apparent that it would be monitized and regulated. It may lead to a mass shedding of Youtube and a movement by users to “the next big thing”.