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To determine the presentation speed that's best for
you, use the following guidelines:
 | If you have a basic dial-up connection to the Internet
using an analog modem, or if you have a single-channel ISDN
connection, then start with the 56 Kbps Modem page.
If you find the quality is unacceptable, or if your Windows Media Player seems to be
continuously "buffering", then select programming from the 28.8 Kbps Modem page. If the quality is still
unacceptable, or if "buffering" is still a problem, then see the Problems
section below. |
| If you have a dual-channel ISDN connection,
or if you use a Multilink product (such as Shotgun), then start with the 128 Kbps ISDN page. If you find the quality is
unacceptable, or if your Windows Media Player seems to be continuously
"buffering", then select programming from the 56
Kbps Modem page. If the quality is still unacceptable, or if
"buffering" is still a problem, then see the Problems section below. |
| If you have a DSL or Cable modem connection,
then start with the Broadband page. If you find the
quality is unacceptable, or if your Windows Media Player seems to be continuously
"buffering", then select programming from the 128
Kbps ISDN page. This may especially be the case during "peak hours",
when Cable modems, in particular, tend to offer less than maximum throughput. If the
quality is still unacceptable, or if "buffering" is still a problem, then see
the Problems section below. |
| If you have a dedicated connection such as T-1,
you should always be able to use the Broadband page. |
Important Note: When
viewing video selections it is much less important to select the correct presentation
speed than it is when listening to audio-only presentations. The video presentations
are able to monitor your connection speed and adapt themselves, in most cases, for the
best playback that your connection will allow. However, the audio-only presentations
do not have this capability.
Problems
If your Windows Media Player seems to be continuously
buffering, or if media playback is poor, choppy or unreliable,
there may be several things you can do to resolve the problem:
| Check your computer.
Media playback requires a relatively fast computer, preferably with a lot of
memory. If you're trying to view media with a 486 computer and 16 MB of RAM, most
likely the results will be very disappointing, at best. To view online video, a
reasonable minimum configuration would be a Pentium class computer with at least 32 MB
RAM. |
| Check your modem. It
may be that your modem cannot support the minimum speed necessary for media playback.
Even though media can be viewed at speeds as low as 28.8 Kbps, for actual
"watchable" quality, speeds of 40 Kbps or greater are required. You should
have a V.90 modem capable of 40-50 Kbps for best quality over dial-up connections. |
| Contact your telephone company.
If you're using a dial-up modem and are sure it is up-to-date and in proper working
order, then it may be that your telephone lines may incapable of reliably handling dial-up
modem connections to your ISP. Also, depending on your physical location, the
telephone company may have certain equipment in use that will make achieving good modem
speeds impossible. |
| Contact your ISP. If
you're sure that your modem and telephone lines are working properly, it could be that
your ISP is not capable of providing the bandwidth provided by your connection type.
This is especially true during "peak hours" when many ISP's and
(especially) Cable companies greatly oversubscribe their available bandwidth. |
Keep in mind that
listening to audio-only programming requires much less in terms of system resources and
speed. So, if you're unable to watch that program you'd like to see, check to see if
it's available in audio-only.
If you've tried everything above
and you're still having problems, or if you're encountering a problem not described above,
please send an Email detailing the problem (and any error messages, etc. that you may see)
to hostmaster@hereshelpnet.org.
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