This set of batch files and commands used together with Links browser gives a very good and relatively confortable way to watch Youtube videos on DOS. The programs created by other authors are under their licences of course, but my programs and scripts on this page (compiled and batch as well) are published as Watch-My-Movie-Ware. This means that you are allowed to copy, use and modify them, but if you like the stuff, you should watch one of my indie films. I will give you a few suggestions at the end of this page because most of you probably don't speak Hungarian so I have chosen some with English subtitles. All the Youtube system is inside a .zip file with an absolutely unusable directory structure. You must understand that all these things are a result of a continuous, almost organic evolution of my DOS installation. Extracting it was not a very hard task, but commenting it was a bit challenging, I needed to keep in mind that people will probably want to use it. Because of this:  You must read all the .bat files from beginning to the end in order to adapt it to your DOS installation. My filepaths are almost always guaranteed to absolutely unusable on your HDD so I just put everything into the .zip file as they were. It's up to you to place them to any desired place on your storage device and rewrite the batch files with correct references, (Now every subdir is referred with %YTDIR%\) so your system won't be redundant if you already have one or more components of the library I use, or you want to use alternatives. The most symple way is to make everything in the root of the .zip file (.bat, .com, .exe etc. files) available with your PATH variable and then remove the REM statement from the YOUTUBE.BAT at the line "SET YTDIR=" and store the directory you installed the package as %YTDIR%. Currently every subdir is refered as "%YTDIR%\blahblablah" so it should work. I don't use it that way, however.

No external documentation except this thing here and what comes with the "third party library". I will upload this as a readme file later. However, everything is heavy commented in the batches. Also I HIGHLY recommend you to use a RAM-disk (Z: on my system). My stuff -- not only this one here -- frequently uses temporary files for stroring and/or modifying and/or transfering data, even the video content is "buffered" this way. I have RAM-disk by default so it is a very straightorward thing on my computer. On a HDD, it would be a nightmare, both for you and for the magnetic material. Please don't be rude to magnetic materials. Neither be rude to SSD cells.

In order to call commands from the Links browser you are required to create a .bat file containing only "%2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9". Call this file wahtewer you want, and define it as "MAGNET PROGRAM" in Links. Than every "magnet: blahblablah shabalabala " (spaces are important) URL will be passed to the OS as "blahblahblah shabalabala", where blahblahblah shabalabala can be any command (or gibberish). After (or before) it you should define file extension associations to media files calling "WATCH -LINKS -sdl X Y %" where X and Y are the resolution and % is how Links filetype assocs defines the file to be opened with the external program. You can define as many as you want. You can define "WATCH -LINKS %" version as well which automatically sets a default resolution, but I also have a lot of them for the most frequentaspect ratios. Details in WATCH.BAT. HX.DOS is required. If you don't have a legacy soundcard or compatible chipset, HX.DOS 2.17+(link) is required.

If you did everything well, you'll be able to watch Youtube only by downloading the desired video page and then going to a URL like "magnet: youtube x ", where x is any character string. Jumping to this URL executes the script immediately, the video is buffered into the file x.mp4 and played by mplayer automatically. After the script terminates, the video stays wherever it is saved so you can watch it again. You can preview videos by pressing Ctrl+C during the download/buffering process. If you do so, only the downloaded part of the video is played. You can later continue the downloading process by giving the YOUTUBE command again but with '-' as the first argument and the original filename as the second one. For example if your original command was "YOUTUBE 1" from the command line or "magnet: youtube 1 " from the browser, your command for continue the video should be "YOTUBE - 1" from the command line or "magnet: youtube - 1" from the browser. Then the package will continue you video to the end or until the next Ctr+C.

Here you can download the whole package with this link:

Download Youtube for DOS

Theoretically it will contain these thingies:

DIR: 128
> A version of MPLAYER for Win32 which works best on my DOS with HX 2.17+. It outputs caca very well. This is not true for all versions when executed on DOS. Furthermore I need a Windows binary because I do not have a SoundBlaster compatible or any other legacy soundcard so I need HX 2.17+. You can theoretically use any other version of mplayer too. You can even use another media player, but QuickView Pro is not the best choice on my system for this purpose (it is for others, but it's not friendly to my ethernet cad drivers when they are operating). The directory name comes from the fact that this version requires %DPMILDR% to be set to 128, so HX runtime will ignore the programs API calls for unimplemented .dll imports.

DIR: MINED
> A Unicode compatible text editor. You can use it for any other purpose as well, but also my batch uses it to conditionally edit temporary files.

DIR: PARAGON
> The best IFS driver for DOS. You can use another version too. It is not a part of the Youtube-stuff currently but I left it here, feel free to use it if you want. Originally I used it to separate HDPMI32.EXE-s from each other, but being too lazy to read the docs made me tyre twice: it is done a more effective way now, details are in WATCH.BAT. However, this IFS driver is very cool indeed, so I just hosted it anyway.

DIR: UNMUTE
> HDA driver of TomCat aka Abaddon aka KAPRONCAI Tamás (Yes, the surname comes after the given name, like in Japanese. And sometimes in Bavarian. Just while Japanese people eat sushi, Bavarians eat wurst.) Well, this is a simple mixer that turns your HDA soundcard -- if it exists of course -- into internal speaker. This is necessary, because PADAR Attila's sound card drivers don't set the card back into that state after finishing using it. So basically any Padar-style soundcard access leaves your HDA-emulated PC speaker muted. This directory contains UNMUTE.EXE which sets up the chipset to output sound on the jack and the speakers. UNMUTEX.EXE only allows the jack. TomCat distributes this package differently, only with one UNMUTE.EXE which is actually "my" UNMUTEX.EXE (It is his binary of course, but on my system, this filename was more reasonable. He made the other UNMUTE.EXE for my request).

DIR: YTCRACK
> The Youtube video URL extractor by Fred C. MACALL. It extracts video URL-s from downloaded Youtube pages.

WGETRC
> WGETRC

128.BAT
> SET DPMILDR=128