Youtube replay not working as before

Although I had noticed this much earlier, I just decided to blog about it now. It seems Youtube has changed some settings on its video site. In the past, you could watch Youtube videos and then replay them without buffering. So a single download allows you to sort of cache the video such that you no longer have to re-download it to watch it the next time and this only expires after you close that page. However, nowadays, youtube videos seems to re-download each time you click on replay.

What is the essence of the replay button if it's going to start a download again for a video I had already watched?

Perhaps, the replay function might have been overused by people since it may not be adding counts to youtube videos or allowing them to show more adverts. The number of views we used to see on a Youtube video seems to be only updated when that video is downloaded and not if it was replayed. However, now it seems Youtube really wants to know how many times such a video had been replayed since the replay button now sends some data back to Youtube when you click it and this requires an internet connection.

In the past, one only needs to watch a Youtube video once and as long as that page remains open, even without an internet connection, you can always replay. Nowadays, one cannot replay a Youtube video without an internet connection.

I tend to get frustrated now that Youtube no longer allows replay to work without having to buffer or download the video again. I kind of preferred the old replay button than the new one because Youtube videos seem to take quite some time to download.

Anyway, it seems there are quite a growing number of sites that are offering the service which Youtube has suspended for now. You can replay youtube videos as long as you can copy the video id and place on these sites.

Examples of sites that allow you to replay youtube videos
- tubereplay.com
- replayyoutube.com
- loopyoutube.com
- infinitelooper.com