How To Optimize and Speed Up Video Playback and Buffering on IPTV Streams

At times, certain video streams can be slow to load or choppy when playing back video that has been buffered. The possible reasons for this are numerous, spanning anything from servers being busy during peaktimes to misproperly configured video players. With any luck, this tutorial will guide in you ensuring that your video player is properly configured with optimal settings to speed up video performance and playback.

Step 1: Ensure that you have the latest version of Windows Media Player installed, as newer versions improve on techniques used to playback video making use of any upgrades or changes in network technology. Once you have installed Windows Media Player, proceed to the next step.

Step 2: While playing video streams, you want to ideally ensure that no other bandwidth intensive applications are running (Peer to Peer, Chat clients, Download Managers, etc). This ensures that the video player can get priority access over the bandwidth alotted to you, and thus ensure a steady streaming video image is delivered back to your player. Running programs like Peer to Peer applications (Kazaa, Bitorrent, Ares) can degrade the priority of access given to your video player causing choppiness in video playback or constant buffering. Close all applicable programs or ensure that they are not accessing the Internet while you are viewing streaming videos.

Step 3: Having shut down any bandwidth hungry programs, you can now proceed to determine whether your Operating System (Windows, Linux, OSX) is properly optimized to handle the network traffic data that it will recieve from streaming media. Windows in particular is quite conservative about the manner in which it handles network data, and attempts to limit the amount of connections and speed at which it delivers and processes network data. In other words, if you are using a recent or unmodified version of Windows - you may need to tweak a few settings for optimal performance.

Download TCP Optomizer, a free program that will make tweaking your Windows Network settings easier.

Run TCPOptomizer and click the Largest MTU tab, then click the start button. TCPOptomizer will do a quick speed check and then output an optimal MTU setting for you. This number corresponds to how much data your Internet network connection can handle optimally. Remember this number.

Click on the General Settings tab, and click on the 'Optimal settings' radio button at the far bottom right. The ideal settings will be chosen for you, ensure that the value of the MTU displayed is similar to the number you were given in the previous step - if not, enter it in.

Click Apply Changes and when asked confirm the new settings by clicking Ok. You may need to restart your computer for the new settings to be registred.

Step 4: Windows Media Player offers some other assorted options, which you can fine-tune. Open up Windows Media Player, and invoke the Options/Preferences menu (Tools>Options). Click the performance tab.

The default connection speed should be set to let Windows Media Player automatically detect your connection speed. This is generally a good setting, but depending on your connection and performance you may want to tweak this setting as sometimes Windows Media Player doesn't properly identify your connection speed and may be underperforming by setting your connection to a speed lower or higher then it actually is. Select choose connection speed if you want, and from the now enabled combo box, select your Internet Connection.

Another setting you may want to tweak is the network buffering, which stipulates how much data it should download before starting playback. Streaming media works by downloading chunks of data from the broadcasting server, and then proceeding to play those chunks as it continues to download additional bits of data. Buffering is the process in which these elements of data are downloaded. By default, Windows Media Player selects how much data it buffers before playing back, but you can of course define this to something more reasonable. If you do wish to tweak this setting, note that the number corresponds to how much data it should buffer before playback. The higher the number, the longer the playback will be (decreases choppy videos) but the longer the load / buffering time will be. It is best to let Windows Media Player to control this setting for you.

Click the Network tab and ensure that all protocols are selected. This menu lets you select which streaming protocols can be used, and lets you enter which ports can be accessed in the event that you are using a strict firewall. You can also adjust the settings that each protocol uses, so that your network settings or proxy are used to recieve the streaming video data.

Click Ok to save your settings.