How to Watch Videos and Listen to Audio General Instructions Macintosh & RealPlayer PC & Netscape Windows 95 General Instructions Here's how you can watch videos and listen to audio programs on The Archaeology Channel. The first video listed on the Home Page, with a text description, picture and links to the video pages, is our most recently introduced video. To watch it, you must have one of our supported video players (Windows Media Player or RealPlayer) installed. These are software programs (not hardware boxes) available for free as downloads. Our Home Page includes links (look just above the featured videos) to the sites were you can download the free players. When you go to those sites, be sure to scroll down the page to the free player option–you don't have to buy the player with all the bells and whistles because the free player works just fine! Once you have the player(s) installed, to watch the video just click on the connection speed (or bandwidth) for your Internet connection and player. If you have a standard telephone dial-up modem, click on "56k." If you have an ISDN line, click on "100k." If you have a cable modem or DSL connection, click on "300k." When you click on the connection speed, a video player page will appear that begins to play the video within a designated frame. The control panel below the frame operates much like that on a VCR. For on-demand videos, you can pause, fast-forward, rewind, and stop as well as control the volume. If you right-click on the video, other options appear, including the video frame size, which you can expand if you want. Other information about the video and the video subject appears in text, links and images alongside the video frame. On the Home Page, below the most recently introduced video description is a list of video titles. To view one of these, just click on the title. When you do that, a small window will appear that includes the video description with a picture and links to the video player pages. To watch the video, just click on the connection speed as described above. Our audio programs operate in much the same way. Generally, just click on the connection speed for your Internet connection and player, and an audio player page will appear and the audio will play. If you are still having trouble getting your player to play, refer to the special issues discussed below involving computer types, players and browsers. Back to top Macintosh Users and RealPlayer Macintosh users may have difficulty using RealPlayer to access video and audio programs while using the Internet Explorer or American Online browsers. RealPlayer will play if you use Netscape 4.x as your browser. Mac users can also play our programs successfully by using Windows Media Player for Macintosh with any of the major browsers. Summary recommendations: Windows Media Player for Macintosh works with all major browsers.  If you want to use RealPlayer, use Netscape 4.x as your browser. Back to top PC Users and Netscape PC users employing Netscape as their browser may have trouble accessing our video and audio programs with Windows Media Player. Those using Netscape 4.x should make sure to install the Windows Media Player plugin for Netscape properly. To do that, install Windows Media Player from your Netscape browser. If that fails, try to manually register Windows Media Player under Netscape Navigator. Those using Netscape 6.x might get an error message if Netscape Navigator registers Windows Media Player improperly. You might have to manually register Windows Media Player under Netscape Navigator. Netscape recommends Windows Media Player 7.1 installer, which will work best if you install the player from your Netscape 6.x browser. Summary recommendations: RealPlayer works with all major browsers. Windows Media Player works with Internet Explorer and America Online browsers. If you want to use Windows Media Player with Netscape 4.x, install Windows Media Player from your Netscape browseer, or manually register Windows Media Player under Netscape Navigator. If you want to use Windows Media Player with Netscape 6.x, install Windows Media Player 7.1 from your Netscape 6.x browser. Back to top Windows 95 Users Windows 95 users wishing to employ Windows Media Player to access our video and audio program should install Windows Media Player 6.4, NOT any later version If you have Windows 95 and employ Netscape as your browser, be sure you stick with Netscape 4.x and not a later version of Netscape if you want to use Windows Media Player. We are considering discontinuing support for Windows 95, so you may want to update your operating system. Summary recommendations: RealPlayer should play with all major browsers To use Windows Media Player, install Windows Media Player 6.4, NOT any later version To use Netscape as your browser to play Windows Media Player, use Netscape 4.x, NOT any later version of Netscape Update your operating system as soon as possible Back to top Questions? If you still have questions, or want to submit comments or suggestions, please send them via e-mail . Back to top