Overview

Welcome to the ESA Live Video Chat section. You do not require any special software other than having Adobe Flash installed on your PC. If you do not already have the software installed, please click here to install it now

Please note: Live streaming does not work on iPhones and iPads. Our normal Video Section does work on these devices

How does it work?

Whenever one of the advertisers go online, they will appear in the "Who's Online" box above. When none of the advertisers are online, the chat will be disabled until such time when one of them connects again.

Free Members
In order to use the chat you must first obtain a username. Click here to register. Free members will be able to chat, but cannot view the live video stream.

Gold Members
Gold Members have full access to the chat and video feeds. As Gold Member, you may choose to enable or disable the advertiser's video stream. Remember to click the button labelled "Enable Video Stream" to view the video (this button will automatically appear if the advertiser turned on her video stream)

Chat Colours

The following colours are used by the chat system:

Advertiser:
The advertiser messages will always display in Pink, allowing you to easily spot their messages.

Gold Members:
Other gold members will appear in a gold colour.

Free Members:
The chats of free members are displayed in a light grey color

Your own chat messages:
Whether you are a Free Member or a Gold Member, your own chats will always display in White. This does not mean that the system didn't detect your Gold Membership, your chat messages still display in Gold on other member's screens.

Problems? Please follow these instructions

If the application does not work as expected, the following instructions will help you pin point the problem:

Corporate Networks:
Most companies allow employees to access work related material on the Internet. Most of these companies also use a wide range of technologies to ensure that employees only use the Internet for work related matters. The chat system uses similar technology to that of MSN Messenger, Yahoo IM, and Skype. If you cannot access MSN/Yahoo/Skype from work, you will not be able to use the chat system.

(We had a few requests from users asking us to unblock their corporate network. ESA does not block any networks, the blocking mechanism is implemented by your own company's network administrator, and only he/she can remove the block.)

Testing your version of Flash:
This application requires Adobe Flash Version 8 to run correctly.

• Click here to test which version of flash you have installed.
• The "Player Version" must read "8,0,0,0" or higher

How to upgrade to a new Flash version

When upgrading Flash to a new version, please follow these steps:

• Get the latest version of Flash here
• Click "Download Now"
• Save the file to your desktop
• Very important: Close all browser windows when the download is complete
• Run the file you downloaded in step 2.
• When the installation is complete, open your browser again
• Return to this page (Go to ESA, and click on "Chat")

Network Congestion:
At times, all traffic to all websites will slow down due to network congestion on your ISP's infrastructure. You will immediately notice a slowdown in page load times for websites like Yahoo, Google, CNN etc. The video stream will also suffer because of this.

Unforunately this is beyond the control of ESA, and you'll have to wait until your ISP corrects the problem (they usually do this within a day).