Live TV HD Channel 5.1 Audio Stutter

I searched around the forums for this, but couldn't pin point a post describing the same situation. Basically this is what is happening...

I'll be watching Live TV on a HD channel with 5.1 audio. Everything sounds find and then the audio starts to rapidly cut in and out (like da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da).

I can even see my receiver Dolby Digital picture flashing off and on almost like the signal is being cut from the sound card to the receiver in and out, in and out.
I thought it might be the Live TV buffer or maybe the hard drive or CPU because when I pause the show and immediately unpause it goes away, and then eventually comes back again.
I also thought it was only on the TV app of Media Center, but it does this during movies as well. I can't seem to get it to do this in pro logic or any signal that isn't 5.1.


Here's my setup.


Motherboard P5G41-M LX2
CPU Intel E6550 dual core
Nvidia 8500GS (512 GDDR2) connected with DVI to HDMI
Sound card is an external USB Creative X-Fi 5.1 Sound Blaster connected via Toslink (fiber optic)
3 GB of PC5300 DDR2 RAM
80 GB Hard Drive (page file is set to 4600MB)
Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit
Using stock codecs for Media Center
TV Tuner is HP USB Tv Tuner found here (HP USB TV Tuner | HP® Official Store)



I think there might be too much going on with USB. My wifi card is USB, my sound card is USB my TV Tuner is USB, my mouse/kb is USB and also the IR receiver.



Any suggestions would be wonderful.

Additional info:

So I followed these steps

a) Click on theStart button,
b) Go toControl Panel,
c) Select Hardware and Sound, and then click onSound.
d) On the Playback tab right click on Speaker option and select Properties.
e) On the Advance tab under Exclusive Mode uncheck both the options and apply the change.
f) Now check as to what happens.

and to no surprise it did it again eventually. Here is something additional I've noticed. If I minimize media center when it happens, the audio cleans up. It's almost as if when the live TV buffer hits the 40 minute mark (or whatever the default is, it starts to do it) and then pausing/unpausing or shrinking the program kicks it back into gear. But then as I am writing this post it's doing it again, and it's only been about 14 minutes. So now I'm thoroughly confused. It does this on a new install as well.