When you go to download a movie, the system checks to see if your cookies have expired, and if the date is off or invalid, then the system thinks you've "timed out" and the session is no longer valid.

So make sure your system clock is correct!

Problems Downloading Movies or with AEBN Feeds
If you get a dialog box that says "Server Not Found" when attempting to download a movie. You may have your Privacy tab on your browser set too high. Cookies MUST be enabled in order to use this site.

Also, Intenet Security Software (Firewall, Anti-Spyware, AV software) will also stop you from being redirected to the video server as well as the AEBN feeds.

AEBN suggests temporarily disabling your Internet Security Software, and this usually works like a charm, but leaves you open for maliscious activity.

If you don't want to disable your security software completley, here are some general directions to add specific sites to an "allowed" list.

There are a LOT of Internet Security Software packages out there, but Norton seems to have the market. They seem to change their interface with every version, so the steps may not be exactly the same, but it should be close!

Getting Started:

Double Click on Norton icon in the lower right hand corner on the Start bar by the system clock

A System Status box will come up.

The area we need to edit is the Privacy Control setting.

Click Privacy Control and to the right it will have a configure button. Click the Configure button.

It will now display the Privacy Control area. Hopefully you have it set to Medium.

There should be an Advanced button. Click it and it will have a list of websites.

At the bottom of the list click Add Site.

I would do three of them: www.chaosmen.com, downloads.chaosmen.com , and one for contentfeed.aebn.net

Start by adding in www.chaosmen.com. Click OK

Then on the right side it has Global Settings. Uncheck USE default settings on all 5 areas and select permit.

Under the User Settings Tab. Do the same. Uncheck all boxes and select permit.

Then click ok.

Now do the same for downloads.chaosmen.com and contentfeed.aebn.net so you dont have to turn off internet security for it also.

Video Hiccups, Plays for a While, Conks out, and or Audio Stops
Nope! There is nothing wrong with the video you downloaded. Stop deleting them and re-downloading them!

Sorry to tell you this, but it's the Windows Media Player, and uninstalling and reinstalling it isnt going to fix it. (Stop doing that too!)

Here is what is happening. When your player plays a media file, it tries to figure out how it was "encoded". It keeps a list of possible decoders or "Codecs". For some reason, your media player is picking the wrong codec, or the coded it has on your system is damaged. Heck, Microsoft does a lot of auto updates, and you may find your media player suddenly isn't able to play all the files it could before.

The codecs are like plug-ins. They aren't really part of the Player, just added in after the fact. That's why removing and re-installing the player doesn't do any good. You don't ever really see them installed, so it's often hard to figure out where and what went wrong.

Ironically, one of the top downloaded files on Microsoft is the Codec Installation Package that installs and fixes media codecs.

Currently, the link is here (but it could move around, Microsoft is always moving things around!):

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=06FCAAB7-DCC9-466B-B0C4-04DB144BB601&displaylang=en

It says it is for Windows Media 9. But it works on version 10 (and probably 11). Version 10 is supposed to be smarter, but I have found more people have problems with 10.

I have noticed that the Codec Pack doesnt work with Windows Media 11

I found this amazing Codec Pack called the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack. Not only does it add the latest codecs, fixes codec misfires, but also repairs broken codec links in your Registry.

You can get a copy with or without Windows Media Player Alternative (They also have a Quicktime Alternative)

I highly recommend the Mega Codec Pack

I downloaded this package and it fixed a ton of problems!

Download the Codec Installation Package, install it, and reboot your system. That "should" fix your problem.

Windows Media
The movies on this site are best suited for play in Windows Media 10 or above. Most videos are 720x480, encoded at 1024k, and are usually about 100megs. The videos are not protected by DRM, so they will play after you leave the site. This is a "nice" thing to do, so I don't want to see my videos shared all over the place. You should also consider joining the site recurring or re-joining on occasion as a way to thank me for going against the wave of copy protection madness. When a new movie is released. The servers DO slow down quite a bit, so be prepared for "rush hours" when everyone is snarfing up a new release.

If you are having problems playing the movies. Make sure you are using Windows Media 10, with XP as your OS. Sometimes the best course of action is to fully install 10, fully remove it, then reinstall. Often your system will have a faulty codec, and even installing a new version will not overwrite it until you install, uninstall, the reinstall. I know, I major pain, but its a pretty good to do at least once year as garbage gets added to your media player routinely.

Quicktime 7
Some of the older movies are not encoded for Quicktime, but all the newer movies are being released in Quicktime 7 format (H.264). The movies are sized at 320x240 for iPod compatibility. They are smaller in width/height than the Windows Media format, but the quality of the compression is quite nice.

You don't have to be on Mac to play these. Quicktime 7 is available for Windows XP, and will play on that setup as well.

OSX users may have some luck playing the Windows Media format in their Quicktime player also. Flip4Mac makes a plugin, and you can find more info and download it from here

PLEASE ONLY DOWNLOAD ONE VERSION! My wee little servers can barely handle the load from one format, let alone two. I understand wanting both formats, but until I can get a server farm going, we will have to restrain ourselves from grabbing every version of a movie.

iTunes is playing the Quicktime Video in Tiny Little Window
I get this question once a week. Usually it is from Apple users who are used to their computer babysitting them.

If you download a movie, and you suddenly find that iTunes wants to play it, it isn't anything I did. You likely updated either iTunes or Quicktime and it got "bossy" and decided that it was now responsible for playing your media files.

If you are feeling frisky and want to fix it so it always works right, here is some info on how to change your settings.

Otherwise, do this simple work around:

Don't double click the movie and rely on your computer to "know" what program you want to open it up in.

Open up Quicktime FIRST, then do a File, Open, and browse over to the movie.

It's such a simple thing, and not relying on your computer to "know" what program you want to use will be a lot less frustrating.

Streaming Available
If you do not wish to download the movies or just want a preview before downloading the whole video, you can Stream the video in two qualities in Windows Media only. The quality is lower and the size of the video is much smaller to handle the video streams.

Streaming not working in Firefox
Firefox sometimes has problems registering .dll files and you may not have the plugin for Windows Media Player installed properly. I have found uninstalling and reinstalling WMP doesn't work. There is a fix for this and can be found here: MozillaZine.

In summary, you need to go to DllDump.com and get three files. npdsplay.dll, npwmsdrm.dll and npdrmv2.dll.

All three files need to be placed in your Windows Media Player folder (usually C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player)

All you have to do is close and open Firefox, and the plugin for Windows Media Player should be found.

Playing Movies
You SHOULD download them to your hard drive and play them from there. If you are experiencing a lot of buffering delays, your connection probably isn't fast enough to accomodate the file size you are trying to view. In that case, it is better to download the file first and then view it. You can do this by right-clicking on the video file link and selecting "Save Target As..." from the popup menu that appears. Specify a location for the downloaded file. Once the download is complete, you can view the movie.

WebTV and Linux
Unfortunately, at this time there is no support for WebTV or Linux systems.

Tried Everything?
Contact Us! or try the FAQ