Streaming/stuttering issues are, unfortunately, among the hardest problems to diagnose. A good rule of thumb is:

  • If both the video and audio stutter while you are viewing, you are most likely experiencing issues with your internet connection.
  • If the video stutters but the audio is fine, you are most likely experiencing issues related to your computer’s hardware and/or software configuration.

Here are some general suggestions that may help:

  • Are you watching video over a wireless connection and your video is stuttering? If so, try it over a wired connection.
  • Do you experience video stalling problems only during fullscreen mode? If so, try lowering your desktop resolution.
  • Are you running any bandwidth-intensive applications on your own computer (e.g. Vuze, BitTorrent, Outlook, other downloads, internet phone services such as Skype, Vonage, MagicJack)? If so, you may want to pause these applications while watching POLOTV.US
  • Are you sharing an internet connection with other people? If so, check to see if they are using any bandwidth intensive operations while you are watching videos.
  • Is the CPU usage on your computer unusually high while watching videos? On Windows, you can check this by right clicking on your task bar, launching the Task Manager, and going to the Performance tab. On a Mac, go to “Applications,” then “Utilities” and launch the Activity Monitor. If the CPU usage is above 50% (or 100% on Mac with a dual-core processor), try shutting down any applications that may be using your CPU.

If you’re still having issues, you can use the following steps to try to diagnose the problem:

1. Pause the video and allow the buffer to reach “Full.” Once it’s full, try playing your video again. If the video is still stuttering, you may be experiencing issues with your CPU performance. Try turning off any CPU-intensive programs you’re running. Additionally, you can try a different browser, or updating your
Flash drivers. If the video is no longer stuttering, your CPU usage is probably not the issue.

2. Perform a Speed Test of your connection. This can be accomplished by going to http://www.speedtest.net. Once there, click on the yellow pyramid on the map (if none of the pyramids are yellow, select one that is closest to your geographic location). This will initiate a speed test – once complete, examine the results. If your download speed (indicated by the down arrow) is below 1,000Kbps, then your bandwidth is fairly limited. You may want to consider limiting your viewing experience to the standard 360p videos, as higher-quality streaming will be more to likely stutter. If your download speed is 1,000Kbps or above, your bandwidth should be able to stream video from POLOTV.US. To watch videos from our HD gallery, we recommend a speed of 3,500Kbps or more.