CONNECTION TYPE:
The first form of Internet connectivity was made possible by the simple phone line. The service was, and is, known as "dial up", because you must make a new connection each time you wish to go out onto the world wide web. A regular phone line is quite limited in the amount of information it can carry per second. It is, if you like, a very narrow pipe. If you try to pour too much data through the pipe it backs up. This is what happens to video files over a phone line. You CAN play them properly, but you must first allow the entire file to load, creating a temporary file on your hard drive. Once the entire file has loaded, pressing "PLAY" again on the player window will play the video from the temporary file, without jerkiness or interruption. (There is one limitation on this, described in the next section). Of course, if you have a high speed connection, like DSL or cable, you should experience few if any problems with video playback.

SERVER TYPE:
Internet video can be saved at the web hosting end in two ways. The first, and simplest, is the use of a web server. This is a standard computer hard drive. When you connect to a web site and request a video, the file is transferred identically to all other types of files available. It is sent in packets, much like writing a book on a series of post cards. The receiving computer checks each packet as it arrives. If one is missing, it stops the transfer, requests the lost packet be resent, and carries on once it has received it. This can cause interrupted playback in a video file, although the problem is rarer than you might imagine. Files "served" this way create a temporary file on the receiving computer, and can be viewed perfectly once the full file is saved, as described above.
The second way to deliver Internet video is from a media server. This is a computer running special software designed to send the video file AND monitor the quality of its reception on the visitor's computer. It talks and listens at the same time. The file it sends does not create a temporary file on the visitor's hard drive and so it can be viewed only as it is being received. The software can adjust the quality of the video "stream" depending on the visitor's type of connection and overall Internet conditions at the time, but if the connection type is too slow and congestion on the 'net too high, the quality will never be what it should, and there is no second chance to view it from a temporary file.

OUR VIDEOS
All of our video samples are served the simple way. If you get jerky reception on a dial up connection, or a really high-traffic day, be patient until the file fully downloads, OR right click on the video link and "save target as" to download a copy to whatever folder you want to save it in. Then you can replay it at the original quality level we intended.