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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@moreenergy.org.
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