Video Accelerator (for Youtube) from SpeedBit – the makers of Download Accelerator Plus has become nothing short of a sensation. It has been downloaded a million times in 49 days. Video Accelerator promises to fix one problem that many users face on websites like Youtube – videos getting stuck due to slow loading. This is a problem that even users with relatively fast internet connection are confronted with.
How Does It Work ?
Video Accelerator enables smooth playback of streaming media by ensuring the the total bandwidth provided by your ISP is used efficiently. Normally, your browser establishes a single connection with the content provider and downloads the media file linearly. In this process the content is often downloaded at a much slower rate than your connections maximum transfer rate. Hence you experience buffering problems even when the bit-rate of the video is lesser than your internet connection speed. Video accelerator on the other hand uses a complex algorithm to split the media file into multiple segments and establishes multiple connections with the content provider. It downloads all the parts simultaneously, thus ensuring efficient usage of the bandwidth available to you. Once, downloaded it reassembles these chunks and sends it to your browser. This is very similar to how Download Managers work.
The Business Model
Video Accelerator is backed by Pitango venture capital and Yossi Vardi, the founding investor of ICQ and managed by Ariel Yarnitky the former general manager of ICQ.
Video Accelerator offers two version of Video Accelerator – Free and Premium. The Free version works with Youtube, Dailymotion, Metacafe, and Grouper. The Premium version additionally works with iTunes. Support for Amazon Unbox, WalMart Video Download Service, Myspace, Fox News, ESPN is expected soon.
Additionally the Free version comes bundled with Ask.com toolbar. However, users have the option of not installing it.
My Experience
Installing and setting up the software was very easy. It quietly sits in the system tray (without consuming any CPU resource), and springs into action as soon as you start streaming video from any of the supported services.
The software did what it promised to do for me. For the first time I enjoyed pause free video playback. Since, it directly intercepts all connections made with these video sharing websites, it is independent of the choice of browser and worked with all browsers I tried.
Apart from speeding up video download it also allows you to search for videos on multiple websites. Video Accelerator also has a History feature. Interestingly enough Fileratings website has a Most Viewed Videos section. I am interested in knowing if SpeedBit is collecting this data from Video Accelerator users.
It does have some issues though. As soon as it is started it makes hundreds of connections (I checked the ip addresses it established connections with, they belong to various video sharing websites and content deliverer like limelightnetworks). With Kaspersky Internet Security running in the background this caused a noticeable reduction in system performance and chocked my connection. I even got a BSOD once when I tried to run it with KIS active. Disabling KIS however solved all these problems. I was told by their support that Video Accelerator is currently not compatible with KIS. Based on user feedback I read at various places, it does seem to have quite a few compatibility problems. It’s still early days for this software and I am sure all of these problems would be fixed in the future.
Overall, I am impressed with this software. Speedbit took the technology used by download managers and adapted it for streaming video. I would like to see it supporting more services in future especially Veoh and Joost.
Download Speedbit Video Accelerator (1.16 MB)
Requirements : Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 (Vista Support coming Soon).
Services Supported : Youtube, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Grouper and iTunes (premium only)
Version Reviewed : 2.0.2.6 (Freeware)
Cost : Premium version with iTunes support costs $4.90 per month or $49.90 if you choose to make a yearly payment. Freeware version is available.
Does it work well with Symantic Antivirus? Does it slow your computers perfomance only with KIS or any other antivirus?
I did not test it with symantec av. It’s unlikely that an antivirus would cause any problem. In my case, it’s Kaspersky Anti-Hacker component (firewall) that was causing problems.
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I downloaded this yesterday, and started playing videos at night. Usually, I can’t play a video as soon as I go to the page, but this actually worked. And the buffering (the red thing) was far ahead of what I’m actually viewing.
The only drawback, it only works with a limited amount of video players. If it worked for any video you watched online, it’d be awesome.
Video accelerator is great and you should try the new version 2.19. it’s compatible with Vista and all other windows OS systems. The new version also accelerates streaming videos from over 50 sites including veoh, facebook, myspace video, espn and loads loads more!!!
you can download video accelerator from:
http://www.speedbit.com/video_accelerator/
The new 2.2 Beta is now also out which is in test stage. You can download this from the speedbit site also on: http://www.speedbit.com/video_accelerator/beta.asp
Enjoy!
thanks for that! I just downloaded it and have no problems with firefor or IE either. Their new version also works on youtube videos again which is really good news, and i tried it, and it works perfectly with youtube. Thanks SpeedbIt!
Hi. I have been trying to get Opera to work with speedbit video accelerator;
do you have any suggestions?
Thanks.
ya i downloaded it but it wont work with my vista. if someone could explain either how to fix it or how to find a version that works it would be appreciated
Same with me . Not working with Vista. But OK with XP.
Hi, i have a problem trying to run the speedbit with my kaspersky internet security 7.0, i already did abour the firewall but still nothing, i shut down the kaspersky and run the speedbit and it work so what can i do please somebody help =(
hi, my SBVA did not work, it only loads half the video and never played the rest!
it’s really annoyin’!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! T-T
my college has block all these things i am using dap it is working properly but this video accelerator is not working
plz suggest
@ rahul go do a stand over of your netword admin.
I used SpeedBit Video Accelerator found it acted very much like adware, sending my personal data to their servers. It would stay connected to their servers when i wasn’t using it, ie in-game. So now i use bywifi google it. Its alot smaller then SB but it works better and can cache locked FLVs because it caches it differently. Just check C:/bywifi/ every now and then else your HD will be eaten up by alot of small flv ad streams…. annoying.
Thanks for commenting.
I am not sure about Speedbit Video Accelerator being a adware, but this post is fairly old and there are quite a few other softwares available (you mentioned one of them – bywifi) that does the same thing.
i m using kaspersky internet security 2010 and i ve approved it in firewall but it still says “approve the firewall to finish installation” please help me