ScottsdaleAZ.Gov

Note: Excessive dropped connections and continuous re-buffering are symptoms of Internet communication problems sometimes related to video streaming services.

Connection:
56kbps minimum. Server will detect your connection speed and send the highest quality stream possible. Dial-up users may find the best results by selecting the audio-only broadcast.

Player:
Windows Media Player version 7 or higher.  [ download ]

Browsers:
Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher   [ download ]
Netscape 4.7 or higher   [ download ]

PC: Pentium; Sound card; 56 Kbps Internet connection (min);

Mac: OS 8.1 or later; PowerPC 603e 180MHz or better; 32MB RAM; virtual memory turned on; 10MB of free disk space.

Windows and Windows Media are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
The City of Scottsdale is not responsible for software you may download and install on your computer.

Check Media Player version:
The embedded version and the installed version of Windows Media Player installed on your OS (computer) might be different.  On the Media window, right click on the player, and then click on "About".
Required: Windows Media Player version 7 or higher.  [ download ]

Double-check your connection speed:
To ensure maximum quality for a wide-range of connection speeds, we frequently include separate audio-only versions of our webcast. If you have a slow connection speed (less than 100kbps like a dial-up connection) you will receive better quality if you select the audio-only version.

How to check speed

Firewalls:
Occasionally a firewall will reduce the speed with which you can receive webcast information on an otherwise high-speed connection. We have gone to great lengths to make our data as 'firewall friendly' as possible but bottlenecks can still occur at a firewall (especially when connecting from a corporate LAN). Most users experiencing this problem can still enjoy the audio-only version of the webcast.

Check computer and player volume setting:
This happens more than you think. Double-check to make sure that the volume is turned on loud enough and, if you have them, external speakers are turned on. This is especially important when using a low-speed connection where there might not be enough bandwidth to display video.

Check plugin installation:
Sometimes Netscape browsers will not pick up the Windows Media Player plugin properly, to fix this problem re-install Microsoft Windows Media Player 7 or higher. [ download ]

The problem is one of three things: (1) You don't have a fast enough connection to receive the video portion of the webcast, (2) you have selected an audio-only webcast, or (3) you do not have the proper codecs installed. To insure that your Windows Media Player has the proper codecs bring up the Player in it's own window and click on Tools/Options on the menu at the top of the window. Within the options window be sure that "Enable automatic codec download" is checked, and click on "OK".

The easiest way to check your effective connection speed is to select a webcast (live or archived) and place your mouse cursor over the small picture, usually of a sun or storm cloud, on the bottom-left hand corner of the viewing screen as the webcast buffers or plays. A small pop-up window will appear displaying the speed at which you are receiving the webcast.

You can make the video viewing area bigger by right-clicking on the video box and selecting the full-screen option or type ‹alt›-‹enter›. To return to the normal viewing size right-click and deselect full-screen or simply hit the ‹esc› key.

Occasionally enough packets will get lost in cyberspace on the way to your computer to cause a noticeable interruption. In most cases the system will recover automatically and resume the webcast after a few seconds without any special action on your part. However, if you get no response after the first minute, refreshing the page is the best way to resume the webcast.