this is meant to have an underlying snottiness to it.

i downgraded from 24 to 3.5, which is "html video compliant", but it's apparently not compatible with the right kind of container. 3.5 is 2009. 24 is 2013. so, there's still some potential that i can find the oldest version, and that it's just on the cusp of what is workable.

if not, i'm going to need to find a new browser for my tv.....

--

hi.

i'm running a 500 MHz processor (it's a pentium III) with one gb of RAM as a tv receiver. i know this is an old computer (1999.), but it worked perfectly fine for this purpose before the html5 rollout came down, and i'm not interested in upgrading it. i mean, what else am i going to do with a PIII besides put it in a landfill? and, that's a poor answer that should leave google hanging it's head in shame. so, i want this to work, somehow - and google should want this to work somehow, too. otherwise, that unnecessary waste is on their conscience. the machine is fine, it's just old. there's no good reason to discard it.

the trick to getting the machine to work for this purpose up to now has been to use software designed for it's life-cycle, which specifically meant holding to a very old version of firefox from the mid 00s and a very old version of flash from the same period (i don't care about security on this machine, and it never leaves youtube, anyways). the html5 pushdown has forced me to upgrade to a version of firefox that is simply too resource heavy to run on this machine. so, now what?

well, i suspect that having stable access to video streams at 144p would help a lot, but i seem to be unable to access streams from my primary streaming source (which is the us state department) at lower than 360p. that was ok when i could run an older version of firefox, but it's just too much, now. why is youtube forcing me to stream at a quality level that is too high for my machine to handle? why can i not make that decision myself?

if that's impossible, the next step is to try to switch browsers. chrome is obviously not going to work. does anybody have any suggestions regarding html5 compliant browsers that are efficient enough to run on a 500 MHz processor?

lastly, i'm considering moving from xp to a very minimal linux distro. this is what these distros are designed for, after all. but, i'm a little apprehensive about whether it's worth the time or not (obviously, there's only one way to find out...). is anybody willing to put down an educated guess as to whether this would actually get around the problem or not?