A Little Techy Stuff about Playing the Videos ...

Broadband speed ?

Well, yes, to see the videos at any kind of acceptable speed, you will need a broadband connection. Generally, dial-up connections just won't cut it. Sorry. And then obviously the faster the broadband speed the better it will be. But it does not need to be extreme as a broadband speed of around 3Mbps should give you pretty seamless video playing.

Which Browsers

So, we hope that, given you have a decent broadband speed, you are likely to have a fairly recent browser. We have therefore designed the site to work with the following browsers: Firefox 2+, Opera 9+, Internet Explorer 6+, Netscape 8+ and Safari/Mac.

Playing the Video

The videos currently are mostly hosted at sites like YouTube, VideoMotion, MySpace etc. To play the videos within BlueWaveBay you do need to click on the central play button. Clicking on the surrounding video image will take you to the host site. We can not do much about that ... and it's fair enough ... they are hosting and serving the video after all.

On starting the video it should start playing within a few seconds ... really, with good broadband (as above) it should be playing within 2 or 3 seconds. The video uses 'streaming' technology which means that the video starts playing as it is downloading. If you have a stop/start experience, then hitting the pause button just for a few seconds allows the download to get ahead of the video actually playing.

What Tools do you need loaded

Well, as the videos are stored in Flash format, really the only essential tool you will need loaded is a Flash player. You most likely already have it loaded, but if it is not the video will not appear and is replaced by a message prompting you to download it.

Now, if you have Javascript enabled on your browser, you can enlarge the video from the list gallery view to a larger single video view and back again. This works even if you have started playing the video. Again most browsers have Javascript enabled by default.

And, finally, cookies. This is the one that some people turn off ... or at least delete them from time to time. We just use them to record your favourites, and so if you have them disabled you can not use this function. We could ask you to login in order to save favourites but, really, how many username/passwords do you have in life already. Exactly. Of course, it means your favourites are only available on your current computer ... so perhaps we'll reconsider this later!