Streaming Video Problem..Driving Me To Drink!

[KevinM]

Alright, Here goes nothing.

I'm getting lots of dropped frames on a brand new media center that I just put together. I'm a tech by trade and usually do pretty well putting these things together and this is just perplexing.

The box I replaced it with was an old Lenovo Thinkcenter P4 3.0 with 2gb of memory, this one is a Celeron e3300 with 2gb of memory and onboard Intel G3100 graphics. I've tried with a radeon 4550 as well and I've received the same results.

Basically any streaming video using IE will stutter every so often, some more than others, netflix seems to "hiccup" every 5 to 10 seconds or so, seeming like it drops a frame. ABC.com doesn't play very well, CBS.com is almost unwatchable.

Using Google Chrome for some of these seems to remedy the problem to some extent, but I still experience "hiccuping" in video. Now this machine has a very minimal install of Windows 7 Ultimate x64 with microsoft security essentials loaded, the latest adobe flash and k-lite codec pack.

Why is this machine doing this? I can play any downloaded material with pause or hesitation, including Mkvs and blu ray movies. The machine is acting a lot like the last, MUCH older machine that I replaced. I believe it could be a Windows 7 issue since I've read other reports of people having some similar issues using Windows 7, but I have no idea how to remedy it.

I've loaded all the latest drivers for all hardware, disabled the antivirus, checked the CPU utilization (which is fine), tried popping in a PCIe video card to see if that would help (it didn't) and now have this issue on 2 computers.

Okay, I'm done, any ideas out there? Anyone having similar issues?

 

[Kari]

Hello Kevin, welcome to the Seven Forums.

"Hiccup" when streaming, no problems when watching downloaded videos. It sounds like a connection issue to me, more than a video issue. Have you tried to pause the stream, to let it do some buffering before watching?

Kari

 

[guiLe]

hi,
I had same opinion with Kari.
I thought you need to buffering it first before playing the video

 

[cata12]

Try a different internet connection and a different browser. Your download speed may not be good enough to support the stream. Have a look at this tutorial.

Catalin

 

[KevinM]

Thanks for the responses guys. I have looked into it more. I have now tested this on 3 separate machines, all with dual core processors and 2gb+ of memory. I have also tested it on my connection at work which is 100mbit+ and have found that the same issues is apparent with netflix and other streaming video. There are no constant variables between the 3 machines at all except the fact that they all stutter when streaming online video. What could this be? Does no one else have this issue? I never had this issue when running Windows XP or Vista, just 7.

Thanks

 

[isherwood]

I just brought a new Win7 machine home and have this same problem. Actually, it's on both the new ThinkPad and my main homebuilt machine. I didn't have this problem until earlier this week.

Speedtest.net reports 30 Mbps, but I can't stream at all from Hulu or Comedy Central They both hang in buffer. Comedy Central reports 53 Kbps bandwidth. I've updated my NIC drivers and removed the router from the scene. It's really baffling.

 

[KevinM]

I'm glad I'm not alone. It's baffling. I've had 2 different routers setup, all the machines on my network experience this problem to a certain extent as well. What I find funny is that Netflix is based on microsoft silverlight and most other streaming video is flash based. Both suck horribly on Windows 7 32bit and 64bit. What gives? Maybe service pack one will address these concerns because I'm done troubleshooting them. It cannot be solved to my satisfaction and I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the Aero interface itself.

Sorry bout your luck I also think it might have something to do with our OCD tendencies

 

[isherwood]

I didn't mention that YouTube seems unaffected.

I'm not sure why you think it's related to Aero. I've been running 7 since last summer with no problems whatsoever until this week.

 

[KevinM]

I don't have issues with youtube either it seems

 

[isherwood]

New information: If, out of desperation, you order a new router from Newegg, the problem mysteriously resolves itself before the router arrives.

Seriously, I have two Firefox profiles set up. The primary is back to normal. The secondary is still experiencing problems. I'm reasonably convinced it was a Flash software issue.