On The Difficulties of Sharing Fanvids in the Late 1990s

From Fanlore, the fan run wiki about media fandom

In June 1999, fans discussed their difficulties of downloading [a] 7MB [fan vid] file in alt.tv.xena-subtext:^[1]

“There is a wonderful Xena music video at http://www.tedraimi.com/ Eventhough the website is by a Ted Raimi fan, the video is strictly Xena and Gabrielle. It’s called "Angel” for the Sarah McClachlan song from City of Angels. It’s really beautiful! Go check it out you won’t be disappointed.“

"I went to the site and downloaded the music video. It took over 45 min. using a 56k modem. Then RealAudio started up and attempted to play the vid. but it was so broken up and garbled that I stopped the playing. Now when I select that file on RealAudio (6.0.3) it starts to buffer and gets about 18 seconds into it before it fails with a "net congestion” message. Is there a way to download and save the video so you can play  it all at once or does it have to be “live” every time?“

"I think that if you right-click the link instead of left-click, you will get the opportunity to "save link as…” (or whatever your  non-Netscape version of that is), and then you can d/l it to your hard drive. You can then open the file with Real Player.

“I downloaded it using the method decribed below with no problem – except that it took over 40 minutes to download, but I can live with that. It was worth it.”