Hey, I built a HTPC and am having trouble with streaming online content, specifically from Hulu. Primarily it seems to work and buffer well, but I get stuttered playback, esp in motion scenes. I'm running XP Home Media Center '02 on this hardware: Motherboard: CPU Type AMD Athlon 64, 1800 MHz (9 x 200) 3000+ Motherboard Name Shuttle FN21 nVidia GeForce 6100, AMD Hammer System Memory 1GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM Video Adapter nVidia GeForce 6100 (256 MB) This is a wireless pc connecting to my home network and feeding my 55" DLP. Local video looks good but streaming is not so good. Also, streaming on my ethernet wired workstation to my 22" monitor is fine even on "hi res" content from Hulu. My question is where's the issue most likely to be? My wireless connection is very good and buffers quickly. Is it more likely to by my video card or the processor? Not enough RAM? What will help? Ideas?
I have reinstalled the newest flash player, java re, divx, directx, even silverlight. I have also updated my mobo and graphics drivers. I'm starting to think my graphics card just can't handle it but it is odd that Apple movie trailers stream beautifully even in 720p. (My wireless connection isn't quite good enough to pull off 1080p.) It seems that some content is just encoded in a way that doesn't play nice with my setup. Specifically, watched Dollhouse ep1 and it stutters. Not bad until you go full screen but then it is very noticeable. Is some content just not working well at all or is it my graphics card?
I'm sort of inclined to agree that it is the wireless or codecs, but like I said, I have updated everything (listed above,) and h.264 720p from Apple trailers looks really really good with no jitters. If the Apple trailers work so well surely I have enough bandwidth, no? I yes then codecs? But what codecs?
Well, I've tried everything I can think of so I ordered a new graphics card. 8500GT should handle it. Soon find out if it's card or codecs...
