FAQ2021-03-20T18:23:28-04:00

Frequently Asked Questions

DVDs2021-03-20T17:48:07-04:00

We offer DVD versions for many of our titles. You can purchase these at our Online Video Store and on the individual web pages about each video. DVDs are shipped from Allied Vaughn, our Made On Demand partner, the leader in MOD discs and supplier to Amazon.

iPads / iPhones2021-03-20T17:46:26-04:00

For iPads or iPhones, you need to download the mp4 (or m4v) file using a separate App. Alternately, download the file to your computer then transfer it to your Apple mobile device via the iTunes Library. To make your purchase and download our videos directly to your iPad or

  • Use the APP’S BROWSER to purchase and download videos. When you press our download button, the App pops up a window with it’s own Download button. Hit it and tell it what folder to save the file.
  • The DOWNLOADS screen shows you the file your are downloading and it’s download progress.
  • The FILE MANAGER creates file folders to store and organize your videos. You also play videos from these folders.
  • The PLAYLIST creates playlists containing multiple videos.
  • SETTINGS is where you can access HELP and WIFI to transfer files to and from your computer.
Android Tablets and Smart Phones2015-10-01T14:32:50-04:00

You can purchase and download our videos directly to your Android device. Be sure to select the MP4 version (not WMV). Our MP4 videos will stream on any Android device and you can download them for offline viewing. Many Android devices have an internal storage card where we suggest storing your video files.

Video Purchase Options2021-03-20T17:40:22-04:00

You have two options for making a video purchase: Vimeo Sailflix and the TSC Shopping Cart.

Vimeo On Demand Rental/Buy

Our video product pages link to our SailFlix Vimeo On Demand Library. Clicking a video purchase button gives you the option to rent or buy the video and immediately stream it online. If you are not already a Vimeo member, you’ll need to join Vimeo — it’s free and membership gives you access to the latest streaming and download technologies. If you lose your file you can download it again from Vimeo.

With Vimeo, you can watch on all screens: computer, SmartPhone, tablet, and SmartTV through Vimeo Apps. See Vimeo Everywhere for supported devices. If you buy a video, you can download a copy for offline viewing and enjoy unlimited online streaming as well. So this is a great way to build your sailing video library in the cloud while having access to local offline copies. With the cost of large-size USB flash (thumb) drives plummeting, you can carry around dozens of long form videos in your pocket.

TSC Shopping Cart

If you prefer, you can sign up for a free account and purchase Downloads and DVDs directly through our TSC shopping cart. Our video purchase system uses Amazon Web Services Global Infrastructure for fast and reliable delivery. Video files download from the AWS edge server closest to your location. This is the same system used by Netflix, Vimeo and many other major video platforms.

You may make purchases as a guest without creating a customer account. If you do create an account, it will store your purchase information for future reference. If you don’t have or want a free PayPal account, click Credit or Debit Card beneath the Cart Total. No PayPal account needed.

If you have a problem purchasing through our shopping cart, you can purchase using the Vimeo Buy button on the video page, or visit our Sailflix Video On Demand (VOD) Store. You can also make purchases through our Sailflix Streaming site: monthly/yearly subscriptions to stream all our titles; downloads or streaming rentals of individual titles. Subscriptions start with a 7-day free trial.

After your purchase, you can immediately download your videos. We offer both QuickTime (mp4/m4v) and Windows Media (wmv) files for most titles. Download the version you prefer. If in the future, you lose a file, just email support@thesailingchannetl.tv with the title and email address you used to make your purchase, and we will replace your lost file at no charge.

You can check your Internet connection speed and estimate download time at our Download Test page

Web Browser2021-03-20T17:34:26-04:00

Any major Web browser will work for downloading our files. If your browser gives you the choice to “Open” or “Save,” please select Save and direct the file to your Desktop, Movies Directory, or another directory of your choice. If you don’t know where your browser saves files, set the save location in your browser’s preferences so you can locate the video files once the download completes.

We recommend the free Google Chrome Browser for PC and MAC. We’ve had good luck with this browser for large downloads. You get to see the download status at the bottom of the browser. When the download completes, Chrome can open the video file in your player automatically. Chrome keeps a history of all your downloads, so you can access them quickly–even if you forget where you saved the files. Get it at Google Chrome.

File Formats2021-03-20T17:27:11-04:00

Most of our videos include two file formats: QuickTime (.mp4 file extension) and Windows Media (.wmv file extension). They both play the same video. Download the file format that you prefer. Some videos use .m4v as the QuickTime extension. We do this for some “chapterized” videos to give them backward compatibility with QuickTime Player 7.xx. This extension should play with all versions of QuickTime. If you have a playback problem, renaming the extension to .mp4 usually works. Some of our titles also include documents in Acrobat PDF format or ZIP.

Switch Plugin for MAC2021-03-20T17:37:57-04:00

If you own a MAC, you may want to consider installing the Telestream’s Switch multiformat video player & encoder with inspection and correction. Switch lets you play a variety of web and professional media formats, inspect and adjust the properties of the file and export a new file. Designed for media professionals, Switch enables visual file inspection, single file transcoding and is an affordable software solution for professional media Quality Control. We invite you to check out Switch to play back and convert Windows Media into a format that will be compatible with your Mac.

Download Instruction Email2021-03-20T17:20:34-04:00

Immediately after your purchase, our system emails download instructions to the email address you used to make your purchase, subject: Sailing Video Download Instructions. If you don’t receive this email within a few minutes of your purchase, please check your spam or junk folder. The email may have ended up there. If you can’t find the message, email us and request that we send you the instructions again.

The instruction email contains a link to your download page. After your purchase, you have a 4-day window to download your files with 3 attempts per file. When you log into the download page, be sure to use the same email address you used to purchase the download. In your instruction email, It’s shown as the User Name along with a unique, case-sensitive password. You can use this same password for any future purchases, or the new password you receive with each purchase.

On the download page, each file has a button. It may take a few seconds for the download to start, so please be patient. Each time you click the button, you use up one of your three download attempts. If you need more download attempts, just email us.

Technical Support – Free File Replacements2016-11-29T10:49:19-05:00

If you need technical support, more time to download your files, or accidentally delete or lose your files due to a computer problem, use this form to contact us or email us at TSC support. Note the video title and your purchase email address.

Announcements2021-03-20T18:14:32-04:00

If you opt-in to our eNewsletter, from time to time, we will email you announcements of new video releases.

Broadband Speed Test2016-11-29T10:49:19-05:00

TheSailingChannel uses an Edge Server near you running on the Amazon Web Services Content Delivery Network. This minimizes the distance a file must travel between a server and your location making our Video Downloads much faster and more reliable. However, a slow Internet connection can still cause issues. Use these sites to test your actual Internet connection speed then plug it in to the download time calculators below. Our averge file size is 1GB. If you are not getting the speed advertised by your Internet Service Provider (ISP), call them and find out why.

Download Time Calculators2016-11-29T10:49:19-05:00

Click on the calculator below to get an idea of how long it will take to download your video based on file size and the speed of your Internet connection. To get a quick estimate, use 1GB as the file size. This is the average file size of our Video Downloads.

The 10 Mbps Thin Ethernet setting is a popular broadeband cable modem speed. If you have Verizon FIOS, your speed could approach 44.736 Mbps T3/DS3. Unfortunately, many U.S. users have much slower broadband speeds, more like 768 Kbps or lower.

T1 Shopper File Transfer Time/Speed Calculator

OTHER DOWNLOAD TIME CALCULATORS – Use these for comparison

Your actual transfer speeds will likely be a bit slower than the calculator shows. Why? Because on a normal Internet connection your transfer speed is decreased by:

  • The quality of the line and your connection to the the Internet specifically you can read up on the influence of latency and jitter.
  • There’s certain amount of your bandwidth used by your modem and ISP in just in keeping the line open! This background use known as “physical signaling overhead” isn’t available to you during your transfer. For example, the advertised transfer speed of a T1 line is 1,536 Kbps however 192 Kbps is usually tied up in the T1 line signaling protocol so the best you’ll ever get is 1,344 Kbps.
  • But wait, there’s more background use! There’s Layer 4 transport and transmission protocol maintainence/overhead. Amazingly, these below processes can eat up to 10% of your transfer speed. Handshaking negotiation procedures between you and the place you are transferring the file such as “slow start” described technically in RFC 2001. TCP overhead, error checking and sending of protocol header(e.g. Each IPv4 header is 160 bits, each UDP header is 64 bits, etc.)
Traceroute2016-11-29T10:49:19-05:00

Traceroute, also called tracepath or tracert, is a network tool used to determine the “path” packets take from one IP address to another.

There are many “hops” between your computer and our server. The Internet attempts to find the most efficient pathway for your file download, but sometmes, a hop has a problem and can stop the download cold. If you wait a couple of hours Internet engineers will probably have fixed the problem.

Note that bad hops usually don’t effect website connections, since webpages download extremely fast. But when you download a large video file, the connection needs to remain stable for a much longer time. Sometimes, a bad hop will cause your connection to timeout and the download will fail. Runnnig a traceroute back to our server can tell you if there are any problems along the path.

You can run the traceroute command directly from your computer through your terminal program or by using a special website. whatismyipaddress has traceroute and several other useful tools.

In your terminal program, just enter the command: traceroute 198.106.50.6
That’s the IP address of our sever which is sending you your video download. Here’s an example of a 13-hop traceroute from our server in the U.S. to a user in Australia (we’ve x-ed out the destination IP for privacy). If there is a problem, a hop will stall and the trace will stop before it reaches the destination IP address.

> traceroute 136.xxx.xxx.xx
traceroute to 136.xxx.xxx.xx (136.xxx.xxx.xx), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 161.58.109.129 (161.58.109.129) 0.584 ms 0.525 ms 0.737 ms
2 ge-1-0-0-453.r00.stngva01.us.wh.verio.net (198.65.47.17) 0.611 ms 0.734 ms 0.850 ms
3 vl-5.r01.stngva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.27.190) 0.611 ms 0.595 ms 0.489 ms
4 xe-5-1-0.r21.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.84) 2.360 ms 1.811 ms 2.110 ms
5 ae-0.r20.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.4) 1.611 ms 3.714 ms 29.968 ms
6 as-2.r21.lsanca03.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.24) 63.202 ms 68.765 ms 71.321 ms
7 po-2.r00.lsanca03.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.250) 67.324 ms 65.706 ms 62.951 ms
8 ge-1-20.r00.lsanca03.us.ce.gin.ntt.net (204.1.253.166) 218.992 ms 221.466 ms 213.373 ms
9 so-4-0-0.bb1.b.syd.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.157) 219.243 ms 219.619 ms 219.242 ms
10 so-2-0-0.bb1.a.mel.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.33) 225.490 ms 233.391 ms 230.615 ms
11 gigabitethernet0.er1.swinburne.cpe.aarnet.net.au (202.158.200.130) 240.481 ms 416.550 ms 291.703 ms
12 gw1.er1.swinburne.cpe.aarnet.net.au (202.158.200.142) 239.605 ms 234.885 ms 229.364 ms
13 136.xxx.xxx.xx (136.xxx.xxx.xx) 240.231 ms * 238.380 ms

If your download times out, try running traceroute to see if there are any holdups along the path.

Tech Support2016-11-29T10:49:19-05:00

Please contact Tech Support for further assistance.

Refund Policy2014-05-19T22:25:40-04:00

If you are not satisfied with our service, we will refund your purchase, no questions asked.

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