By: Adult Rental Staff

We like to make your experience with us much more pleasurable. Each week we will provide you with some helpful hints.

This week we offer you some Windows Media Player Tips and Helpful Hints.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DOWNLOAD AND STREAMING MOVIES?

The difference between downloading a movie and streaming is simple. Streaming allows users to watch a movie in real time with a buffering period. Downloaded movies reside locally on the PC. Advantages to streaming are you get real time almost instant viewing without the wait of downloading large movie files onto your local drive. Disadvantages of streaming is that depending on your connection speed or network congestion, you may suffer some lag time or have to wait briefly for buffering which sometimes interrupts the stream for a few brief moments. With the advance in technology, these issues are becoming less noticeable each day.

WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER HELP WHY WON'T CONTENT PLAY?

The server may be down, the file may not be in a supported format, the content may have been moved, or the URL to the content may be wrong. If you are using Netscape Navigator 6, you may be experiencing problems that are caused by a redesign of the plug-in architecture in that browser. This redesign has resulted in some loss of backward compatibility. In these situations, there is nothing that you can do. If the content is embedded in a Web page, try clicking the player's video screen. In some cases, network congestion may cause the player to time out; keep trying, or try again later when the network is less congested.

WHY CAN I PLAY CONTENT FROM SOME SITES BUT NOT OTHERS?

Your computer may be behind a firewall that has not had the appropriate ports opened for use with Adult Rental. However, if a server has HTTP streaming enabled, Windows Media Player can take advantage of its protocol rollover capabilities and receive the file through HTTP instead of the typical (and optimal) streaming protocols. This is why you can receive content from some sites but not others. For the best quality and consistent results, encourage your administrator to open the appropriate ports on the firewall to permit streaming.

CONTENT PLAYS, BUT THERE ARE A LOT OF PAUSES AND THE PLAYER SAYS "BUFFERING"

The player is most likely experiencing network congestion. This means that there is not enough available bandwidth to stream the selected file. When you are using a TCP connection, the data in the player's buffer is used to supplement the stream until the buffer is used up. Once the buffered data is gone, the player pauses, replenishes the buffer, and then resumes playing, using the new buffer to supplement the playback stream bandwidth. This cycle continues until network conditions improve.

We suggest you first select the speed below your initial choice, may times this will resolve the issue. You may also wish to try again when the network is less congested.

Another option is to use UDP as your protocol by making sure that it is the only protocol option in use. To set this option, click Options on the Tools menu. This reduces buffering, but has the adverse effect of dropping data if there is high congestion or insufficient bandwidth. If you are located behind a firewall, you may not be able to use UDP as your protocol.

WHAT CAN I DO ABOUT VIDEO PROBLEMS LIKE GREEN OR PINK LINES APPEARING ON THE VIDEO, CHOPPY VIDEO, OR WHEN THE PLAYER STOPS RESPONDING WHILE PLAYING A VIDEO?

We encourage you to first check for updates for your video card driver. If that doesn't solve the problem, turn down or off video acceleration. To do this in Windows Media Player, go to the Options dialog box and look for this option on the Performance tab.

AUDIO WILL PLAY BUT VIDEO WON'T OR VIDEO WILL PLAY AND AUDIO WON'T

Make sure that your computer has a sound card to play the audio. If you do have a sound card, the content that is being played probably uses a compression codec that is not installed on your computer. To make sure that you have all of the codecs that are currently supported, reinstall Windows Media Player.

To do so, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/format/codecdownload.aspx

This issue may also occur if there is not enough bandwidth to play both audio and video. You may receive sound even though the video is not present because audio requires less available bandwidth

I CANNOT HEAR THE AUDIO ON SOME CLIPS BUT ON OTHER CLIPS I CAN

This may be due to several issues, very few of which can be corrected in the player. To verify that the problem is not a player problem, follow these steps:

Verify that you have the correct and up-to-date drivers for your sound card. Using incorrect drivers or out-of-date drivers can cause unexpected behavior.

Some video adapters cannot play audio content that was created by using an 8 kilohertz (8-kHz) or 16-kHz sampling rate. To determine if this is the problem, determine the sampling rate that is used in the ASF file:

1.In Windows Media Player, open the streaming media file with which you are having difficulty.
2.On the File menu, click Properties.
3.Click the Advanced tab.
4.Look at the list of codecs in use to see if you can determine the sampling rate for the audio. If it is 8-kHz or 16-kHz, this may be the problem.

I CAN HEAR AUDIO BUT IT HISSES, SOUNDS SCRATCHY OR DROPS IN AND OUT

Be sure to verify that you are using the proper and most up-to-date drivers for your sound card. Adult Rental uses standard Windows compression codec's to compress and decompress the audio. Poorly implemented or incorrect sound card drivers may cause problems with compressed audio. You may not notice that you are using bad or mismatched drivers because all of the system sounds that are included with Windows are uncompressed audio files. You can typically play these files correctly even with bad or mismatched drivers. This problem is not unique to Adult Rental; virtually any multimedia program that uses Windows sound codec’s and compressed audio files is likely to exhibit similar behavior.

Please note that some sound cards cannot play audio content that was created with either an 8-kHz or 16-kHz sampling rate. To determine if the sampling rate is the issue, check the sampling rate that is used in the .asf file.

1.In Windows Media Player, open the "problem" streaming media file.
2.On the File menu, click Properties.
3.The sampling rate is listed next to "Audio Codec" (for example, 44-kHz).
4.If the sampling rate is 8-kHz or 16-kHz, this rate may be the cause of the problem.

Are you looking for some more tips or can you offer some helpful hints?    Send us your thoughts tips@adultrental.com you can win 30 minutes free!