More and more, the Internet is all about streaming video and audio. Streaming means that the web site slowly feeds the audio or video content to your computer. With slow Internet connections (dial-up and basic DSL), the video might be choppy and audio may stutter. Unfortunately, there is no sure fire way to combat this with slower connections, but you can take steps to improve the performance of Internet audio and video.

All Internet media players (Windows Media Player, QuickTime, Real Player, Winamp, etc) try to detect your Internet speed and then stream (feed) you the content at an appropriate rate. Unfortunately, the players tend to be a little too aggressive in feeding the video/audio and the result is poor performance and less than an enjoyable multimedia experience.

One technique that seems to work pretty well is to change the player's settings from automatically detecting your connection speed to setting it manually. My recommendation is to set the streaming speed of a player to at least one level BELOW what your actual speed is. For any dial-up connection, do not set the streaming speed to higher than 28.8kbps. For basic DSL (typically 256kbps), set the speed at 128kbps. Doing this "tricks" the player into feeding the content in more digestable bits resulting in a little smoother audio or video experience.

Watch my tip below on exactly how this is accomplished and for an extra tweak or two to help maximize your multimedia enjoyment with any speed Internet connection.

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