[zevelhead]

Ever since I bought my iMac; g4, 800MHz, 768mb SDRAM I have had problems watching streaming video from web sites, particularly with Windows Media Player. It goes slow, stops and buffers, stops completelely and rarely works smoothly from start to finish. Is my CPU too slow? Do I have to go out and spend good money to get something to make it better? Is my internet connection too slow? I have DSL (supposedly). I have the impression it is only slightly faster than dial up much of the time.
Any suggestions?

[albloom]

Maz, do NOT use Windows Media Player. MicroSoft dropped support
for that beast on Macs a while ago, and it never worked well anyway.
Get the Flip4Mac QuickTime component (free):
web page

[mjpenterprises]

i have the same config as you except for the ram mine is 1gb and i found that VLC free app will play practically everything you throw at it and smoothly also has radio feed in it

[zevelhead]

Thank you. This leads me to another question. How do I play a clip on a VLC player if the default player is Windows Media Player? In other words, How do I get the clip onto or how do I download the clip on the VLC?

[albloom]

Same way you specify any app's attachment to a file. Splat-I on
the file (Get Info, Command-I), and choose VLC as the open-with
app.
Click the change-all button if you want all files with that extension
to launch VLC.

[jojokate]

Al,
Just read your answers to the previous question about poor-quality video streaming from the web. I installed flip4mac as you suggested, and the problem is still happening (video stops, rebuffers, and starts up again -- sometimes.) I'm referring to files that you plug into directly, not downloaded files on the computer.
What's up with mine? I have an iBook G4, 512 MB DDR SDRAM, 1.33 GHz.

[dougster]

-Hi,

Quote:

---

I'm referring to files that you plug into directly, not downloaded files on the computer.

---

You might be lacking RAM for the buffering to play catchup. When this happens more of your HD space is used as 'virtual memory' to take over which is slower. If you have little HD space it'll cause the buffering to be even slower. Might peek at Activity Monitor: HD/Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor and view whats going on by clicking System Memory.

[trifidsagitari]

I've found an interesting problem when streaming video on ATT's dsl.
When I stream a news video clip (CNN, MSNBC etc) my computers ( apple G4 1GB-400MHZ-tiger or windows XP) stutter and pause... a real nightmare!
I have time warner's road runner as a backup (I do some online trading) and when I switch my computers to rr everything runs smoothly, the long pauses and stuttering go away.
My ATT's dsl connection is 6M/768K and speedtests indicate that there are no problems, no packet loss during streaming so the answer to the problem must lie somewere else and not on my side. Funny thing is that every person I know that have ATT's adsl have the same problem.
So maybe your problem is not your G4? I would try again with a friend that have rr or other inet connection and see what happens.