Solved! Why won't my laptop stream hd videos well?

danrikcarter

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Jul 1, 2011
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My computer is having troubles playing hd videos. Unless I pause at the start and allow the video to load, my computer will only play for a short amount of time and then it starts buffering. But as far as I know, it shouldn't have to do that. This is not reserved to 1080p - 720p as well.

laptop Acer aspire 7859
AMD Phenom II X4 N970
AMD Radeon HD 6470M
4.00 GB Ram
Windows 7 Firefox 4

Any suggestions to fix this? Thanks in advance.
 
Solution
That would be true if the web server where the video resides could push you the data fast enough.
You might try during low demand / low traffic periods. Otherwise it's pretty much out of your control.
Best practical solution is to start the video, set in on pause and let it finish loading. Do the same thing for the next video you want to watch. Then you can let it the first play without awkward pauses.

IThelpdesk

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Jul 1, 2011
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Mainly has to do with your internet bandwith type of connection. What type of connection do you have, DSL, or Cable?
 
That would be true if the web server where the video resides could push you the data fast enough.
You might try during low demand / low traffic periods. Otherwise it's pretty much out of your control.
Best practical solution is to start the video, set in on pause and let it finish loading. Do the same thing for the next video you want to watch. Then you can let it the first play without awkward pauses.
 
Solution
It has nothing to do with your laptop. As stated above, it's due to your internet connection.

My advice is to start the streaming video on to your PC at least several minutes before you want to watch the movie. Just pause the video. When you are ready to watch the video, hopefully enough of the movie have been buffered so that any decrease in your download rate will not cause your video to stutter.

For example, start streaming while you are preparing something to eat or when you order out. That way when the food is ready a decent portion of the video will already have been buffered.
 

Max Collodi

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Feb 24, 2010
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Another method would be to use one of the Firefox add-ons like "Download Helper" to save the video to your hard drive and play it from there once it has downloaded. They may not work with all sites, but they work with quite a few.