Video Help
Are you having problems viewing the videos?
This site makes use of medium-density “Flash” video (more on “Flash” below).
In our experience, our videos will stream quickly enough via typical broadband connections to be viewed almost immediately by most people, without any interruptions or hesitations. In short, we have found that the videos we are serving up at this site will work for the great majority of people, the majority of the time.
Some of us, at least some of the time, however, will find that some of the videos might start and stop. This hesitation is likely caused because the video is playing faster than the video data is downloading to your computer from the Internet. Every time the video player runs out of buffer, it needs to stop to wait for more video data to download. This can be annoying, to say the least.
There is a simple (though imperfect) fix to this problem.
After choosing a video at this site, simply hit the “Pause” button and wait a minute for the video to fully (or mostly) load before playing it. At that point, you can have an uninterrupted viewing of the video. If you are experiencing this sort of stopping and starting, you might have to use this “hit the pause button” trick each time you load a new video. If you want to watch a video a second time, it will likely be retained in your local computer’s cache, allowing the second (or third, etc.) playback to be immediate and without interruption.
Why is the download speed not keeping up with the playing speed? Some ISP’s don’t purchase enough bandwidth, causing congestion (slowdown of your download) during periods of peak usage. There are some tools on the Internet for testing your DSL speed to see whether you are a victim of such a peak congestion problem (for example, here and here). According to various Internet sources, peak usage in the United States occurs during the morning, with additional periods of intense usage during the lunch hour and once again after dinner. Perhaps your computer is part of a single large network at a business. Heavy video or audio usage on that office network can have the same effect of slowing down the download speed of videos you are viewing. If viewing these videos during off-peak times is not feasible, your only option would be to use the “hit the pause button” trick each time you view a new video.
If you find that videos never play correctly on your computer, you might need to see a computer professional to determine the specific cause. The single most common cause of consistently poor video performance is a windows PC that is in poor shape for broadband. Specific culprits include insufficient memory, underpowered processor, an older or unstable windows installation, or the accumulation of spyware, malware or Adware.
What is Broadband?
The term “broadband” refers to transmission media that can simultaneously carry multiple channels. The FCC uses an alternate name, “advanced telecommunications capabilities,” which the FCC defines as a downloading speed of more than 200 kb per second. This is a definition the FCC hasn’t updated since 1998. Technically speaking, then, an ISP can offer “broadband” of this pathetically slow speed, although that speed would be a very slow connection. If you suspect that your connection is generally slow, contact your ISP to determine your connection speed. Keep in mind that broadband is more reasonably defined by the International Telecommunications Union Standardization Sector as a speed of greater than 1.5 million bits per second. In short, not all broadband is the same.
Keep in mind that this site makes extensive use of Flash technology. If you don’t have Flash installed you will see prompts on the Simon Passanante Home Page advising you that you need to go to the Adobe site to download Flash before making full use of the features of this website. The download is quick and free.
