AN MP3 DOWNLOAD/PLAY QUERY...

[fredwest]

Hi,
I have an web drive at idrive.com. This is a good thing as I can store my 'hard to get' files there....and some are VERY hard to get....believe me! It's an MP3 and it took me the best part of TWO WEEKS to FINALLY get a site that would let me d/l it.

I have it on the PC at work so I uploaded it to my idrive in the hopes of d/ling it when I got home.....here's where it gets a bit odd....

I tried a few times tonight to d/l this MP3 but the transfer rate sucked. I was lucky to get 1.5k/s.....MAX. Way too slow. So I decided to play it from the idrive. It used Real Player and it loaded/played X amount of the song and then stopped to load the next part etc. I was watching the 'Temp' directory like a hawk and I refreshed it a few times and found the 'temp' file that was my MP3. Each refresh saw this file grow....I copied it when it was like 95% completed...

OK. I got my MP3 but I'd still be here waiting for it to just d/l.....whereas using RealPlayer it d/led so much faster (forget the pauses in playback). It was a .TMP file and I just re-named it to .MP3 and it played fine.

SO.....why was the 'download' option so much slower than using RealPlayer and grabbing the temp file it created? The MP3 is about 3.25Mb compared to the 3.4Mb that I would have got if I just d/led it. It seems that using RealPlayer to play the file will get it to my PC sooner (but I have to grab the .TMP before it gets deleted when the MP3 finishes).

Has anyone any explanation for this? Why is d/ling it slower than playing it with RealPlayer and then grabbing the temp file it creates???

Any insight would be great and very interesting to hear!


Yours

Declan (aka fredwest)