Streaming Videos from Youtube etc

[Raonaid]

I have tested my broadband internet download speed and all is ok, but watching a video on youtube is like being on a 56k modem. Other downloads are fine. I have downloaded all the latest Quicktime and realplayer wotsits. Anyone got a suggestion? cheers

[huh]

YouTube can be like that. I get around 6 megabits per second yet YouTube can still take ages to load. All I can say is to pause the video and wait for the red bar to grow before unpausing it.

[Mr_Me19]

If its a popular video the it will take longer to load as everyone is trying to get it at the same time. YouTube can be a bit 'dodgy' at the best of times though as huh said.

By the way: QuickTime and RealPlayer won't affect YouTube at all.

[emb123]

As the other guys have said, Youtube can be like that. It's usually really bad in the evenings but fine during the day.

If there are any that you particularly like you can always capture them to your hard drive and then watch them whenever you like. There are many free plugins for Mozilla Firefox ('unplug' is one I use) to do that and the 'flv player' is also free. Doing that saves internet bandwidth so the ISPs will be happy even if youtube look sideways at you :)

[Rheghead]

Hi thank you for your replies, I think the problem must be with the sites that I am going to. Photobucket is like loading on a 56k modem now as well as youtube, it might be down to traffic to the site, as I have done a speed test and I am getting 2mb/sec download speed.

EDIT I have now gained control of my Rheghead account after mrs devilishly changed my password!

[TBH]

Try using open dns servers instead of your ISP's.

[Niall Fernie]

This website: http://youtubex.com/ allows you to download the video to your hard drive for playback later.

You'll also need a player for the files which you can get here: http://www.martijndevisser.com/blog/flv-player/

Not quite as instant as viewing them on youtube itself but there's no stuttering :)