How can I tell if high network traffic is affecting playback in Windows Media Player?
Special events and high network traffic can cause playback problems. When many people are trying to access a Web page or a video at the same time, this causes high network traffic. When the player encounters high traffic, it degrades quality in an attempt to maintain continuous playback. You can see or hear the degraded quality in the playback. You can also see indications of this in the Status bar across the bottom of the Windows Media Player. The status bar displays messages about the status of the resulting stream. These messages can be used to troubleshoot some problems: The timestamp (on the right side of the Status bar) normally displays the amount of time you have been connected to the Internet via the Windows Media Player. On the left-side of the Status bar there is a small animated icon that indicates the streaming status of the clip. It should appear to be moving. If it looks like it is running slow or stopped all together, then that is an indication there may be some network
