Video streaming freeze

[AndrewSchofield]

Can anyone help. When i'm trying to watch videos online, my pc plays them fine for a short period (this seems to be either exactly 5 seconds, or exactly 10 seconds, never any longer and nothing inbetween??) and then just freezes. It doesn't matter if its live video - just tried it with the football coverage on the BBC website, or archived video -ie YouTube.

I've checked the plug-ins are up to date in my browser but dont really know what else to check??

I'm running Windows XP with SP3 and browsing with Firefox. We've got a laptop which runs online videos fine, and i can even view them over wi-fi on my smartphone - so I don't think its a problem with our internet connection/speed?

Anyone any ideas?

 

[Diyisfun]

I would say it is your internet speed.
Try it out of a peak time.

 

[AndrewSchofield]

But why do videos run fine on our laptop - at any time of the day? That uses the same internet connection? And using the laptop downstairs it doesn't always have a very strong wi-fi signal, but still videos work fine....?

I'll try at other times of the day and see if that helps....

 

[foxhole]

You could try increasing the buffering size.

 

[big-all]

disc clean may help

 

[Diyisfun]

Are there background progs running?

 

[AndrewSchofield]

Diyisfun - I still haven't tried it out of peak times (not entirely sure what times to try??). And I still don't understand how the internet speed can be to blame when the same problem doesn't occur on other devices using the same internet connection - we use the laptop to stream films from LoveFilm and have no problems with that. And its the EXACTLY 5seconds or 10seconds that I don't get...surely every now and again i'd get 7seconds worth before it freezes, or maybe 12seconds if it was something as random as a fluctuating internet speed? And..yes, i have other programs running, i'll try it without....

foxhole - How would I do that?

big-all - Don't think its a disc clean issue - i've literally just formatted the HD and reinstalled everything...

 

[joinerjohn]

Try using Google Chrome browser instead of Firefox.

 

[AndrewSchofield]

John, have tried Chrome instead of firefox - didn't get on with it all and went back to firefox. Although, saying that - I don't know why i didn't think to try a different browser to see if it makes any difference. Will try IE and see what happens.

 

[AndrewSchofield]

Right, I tried IE and the same thing happens, and I tried both FF and IE without anything else running. I also brought the laptop next to the pc and tried watching the same video at the same time on both devices - it ran fine on the laptop, stopped after 5 seconds on the desktop.

When I say it freezes, I don't mean it stops for a while and then moves on, or jumps to later in the video, it stops completely and no matter how long you wait, nothing happens. If i click on the timer bar at the bottom further into the video it'll jump to that point in the video, start playing again but again, plays for 5 seconds and freezes.

 

[joinerjohn]

How much RAM does the desktop have, compared to the lappy ? . Check the download speeds of both lappy and desktop at www.speedtest.net If the desktop is considerably slower than the lappy, then I'd suspect the ethernet cable (had this once with er indoors computer)

 

[AndrewSchofield]

John - done the speed test on both pc and laptop - pretty much similar:-

PC - Ping 40ms, Down 2.91 Mbps, Up 0.67Mbps
Laptop - Ping 51ms, Down 2.93 Mbps, Up 0.67 Mbps

The PC has 500Mb Ram, but a 2.8Ghz chip, the laptop 1Gb Ram but only 1.8Ghz processor.

Could it be a RAM issue?

 

[Mursal]

Not an expert, but had exactly the same problem. Thought it was a slow connection until I put the laptop on, and everything worked without buffering. Both running Firefox, XP (service pack 1).

I had a gig of RAM in the PC and the Laptop had 2gigs. My clock speed was a little faster in the laptop, also (cant remember the figures).

Unfortunately I didn't spend any more on the PC to rectify the problem.

Hope this helps

 

[foxhole]

http://www.delete-computer-history.com/slow-streaming-video.html