Your media starts and stops a lot while I'm watching/listening to it. Why?

Watching or listening to our recordings through a web browser is known as Web Streaming. This requires a certain speed of data transfer between our web server and your computer in order to smoothly play the recording. The actual speed achieved can fluctuate abruptly, and unfortunately it can sometimes be too slow for smooth playback. There are several reasons this can happen, and most of them are beyond our control.

When this happens, the recording will temporarily pause while more data comes in. This is known as buffering. When enough additional data has come in, the recording will resume playback from the point where it left off. However, if the transfer speed stays too low, the buffering process can appear to last indefinitely and the player might even stop trying to play the recording.

One way to try to avoid this problem is to visit our website on a different day, or a different time of day, and try again. The transfer speed might be higher at that time.

Another way is to download our recordings to your hard drive and play them from there, rather than through your web browser. If you do this, you will also need software that can play the format of file that you are downloading.

If the slow-downs are frequent, then upgrading the speed of your Internet connection might also help. Please note that dial-up Internet connections are not recommended for Web Streaming. In this case, we suggest only downloading the files to your hard drive as described above, or upgrading to a Broadband Internet connection such as DSL.

Return to FAQ section

Not helpful?

You could try the following: