I haven't been able to watch youtube in the browser for ages. I get like one 10-20s chunk then nothing further. Do you use just the standard block lists?
Your experience is strange, I use the official Chrome (not Chromium) with uBlock Lite and everything works perfectly (except the 5s delay at the start).
Are you using a VPN? Youtube will be a jerk to those IPs. I need to set my exit node to either Poland or Albania to watch YT. (The latter incidentally is supposed to act as an ad-blocker due to local legislation banning some types of ads, but I have my own ad-blockers so I cannot confirm.)