Wednesday, November 10, 2004 at 9:41 PM
Edited Wednesday, November 10, 2004 at 10:25 PM It will depend on a couple of things. I am running OS 9 - WMP 7 is I believe the last version for OS 9 that MS made...that is why so many .wmv files no longer will play. A couple of things could be bogging you down.
1) connection
2) buffer
3) back ground use
4) not enough ram My set up is a pretty dated iMac (DV Slot load - the first of the 5 flavours). But, I have over half a gig of ram, and have a pretty speedy DSL connection as the office is about 30 seconds from my house. I would think that it is your connection, probably nothing you can do about that. But, if it is a memory/computer speed issue, try doing nothing in the back ground...you should have virtual memory activated, but if you over step the real memory...you will be bogged down, especially if you are still running your stock drive - Apples, unless you are a high end box, ship with pretty slow drives. Try bumping up the buffer (edit>preferences>>Network settings tab)..also check the connection settings are correct. I think it sets a 10 second buffer, you can try upping it. WMP is not the most polite programme. With it and OS9 (you really should be using 9.2) and background applications...well, you are going to crash. It might be worth using a trouble shooting programme such as Mac TCP watcher. With it I can tell that I am getting a .09 ping time to the Xtra server (38.116.132.19 which is mms://ccdig.liquidviewer.com/xtra) in 17 hops (but I am not that far away - directly north in Canada). If it is the only programme running, your connection is fast...I am afraid you might be SOL. Try bumping up the buffer. I have not tried the stream in a while (I use cable radio from Seattle and it has not crapped out on me in a while) - I will see if the Xtra feed give me any trouble tonight (10 Nov) to see if it is perhaps time specific) but 20 minutes before the start of the show it has been crystal clear for near on 3 minutes. ETA Okay, it is now into the first break on the radio, so I am checking the Xtra feed - a good 5 minutes behind...no skips (a bit over compressed and not as high quality as the previous music feed) but certainly no blanks. It could just be that you have a bottle neck of bandwidth between you and the servers. —Laxdude | 
