Help With Streaming Video

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We're very happy to offer online streaming video for our programming and we strive to make it easy to use. But sometimes the fickle nature of technology can cause problems, so here are some of the common issues our users encounter and their solutions.

WEB-EMBEDDED VIDEO ON DEMAND and LIVE VIDEO

First ensure that you have a Flash Player Plugin installed in your browser. If you are behind a firewall, opening TCP port 1935 will be necessary. This is done usually via a web interface on your router at home or by your system administrator / network administrator at work.

Download Flash Plugin

When you try to play a LIVE or ON DEMAND streaming video, the player gives an error or video says "Connecting..." indefinitely.

This problem is often caused by a firewall. A firewall is a device or piece of software that protects your computer from unwanted connections on the Internet to help keep you safe from hackers and malware. Most of the time these will allow video streams to pass through, but sometimes they get a bit over-eager and block them. If you have a wireless router to share your Internet connection, are connecting from a business or organizational network, or are running software such as Norton Internet Security, Zone Alarm, or McAfee Internet Security, then there is most likely a firewall between your web browser and our streaming server. Consult the documentation for your firewall or speak to your network administrator and allow connections for RTMP, which is port 1935 (TCP and UDP).

DOWNLOADING

You'd like to play a video outside of your web browser.

Currently we do not offer direct downloads of our video content on the web. We plan to offer mp4 downloads for a moderate fee sometime in 2010, and possibly a subscription option for those who watch significant amounts of CCTV / Town Meeting TV content.

You can purchase high-quality DVD's or compressed mp4's of shows on the program page. You can also choose to embed the video on your website or blog.

Since our video streaming system makes use of open standards, it allows you great flexibility in how you view it. Any media player which supports these standards can play our programs. One of the better ones is VLC media player, which is free and open-source.

Download VLC media player

After you've downloaded the installation file, double-click on it to start the setup program, or mount the disk image. Just follow the instructions to install the software on your computer.

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