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Watching Online Movies

P

piasabird

Lifer
I have the system in my sig.
E7200, Integrated HD Video and HD Audio, 2 gigs DDR2, Vista.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/147478/the-great-queen-seondeok-episode-3

I am watching this series of Korean Movies with English Subtitles. I love these movies. They are very interesting. After watching about 3 of them my system starts bogging down and the hard drive starts running a lot.

If I want to upgrade what would you suggest? I may keep the DVD Drive and HD for now.

Motherboard?
Processor? Quad?
Ram?
Video Card?

I am kind of fond of the Idea of using something like a new I-3 processor or boosting the RAM or going to Win 7 64 bit. Will a different browser make a difference or changing some settings?
 
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You need a better video card. The X3500 graphics is holding you back. Your CPU is more than adequate. I use an E4300 with an integrated NVIDIA 9300 and even with that weak CPU it averages only a 45 - 50% load when running Hulu.
 
You might just see if updating your software helps. Make sure you have the latest version of Flash. Trying a different browser would also be cheap and easy to try.

Are you just watching the movies, or are you doing other things at the same time? You might try just restarting the browser as well. I know things run smoother if I restart Firefox every so often (I watch a lot of Netflix and Hulu).

You might also check how much storage your browser is allowing, what could be happening is that as its storing more info, its then swapping stuff more between the memory and the HDD.

A video chip that can enable GPU Flash acceleration will help as already mentioned.
 
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I'm betting that your browser isn't releasing RAM used and when it bogs down and you see the HDD activity, you are experience a lot of swaps to the page file.

If you don't want to spend any money, i'd follow the checking for updates to flash and your browser. After than, just close and re open your browser.

But you can/should check the memory usage when this is happening to see what task manager says. If you open task manager and let it run when you start watching the movies and see if the ram usage keeps building while you are watching. Firefox, or rather some of the plug-ins, seem to suffer from memory leaks. This could be the issue if your ram is being eaten away.
 
So you dont think this is a Vista Issue? I had problems with it before. I have the 32bit Home Premium version of Vista with the 1st update. I never did get the multimedia center actually working. I had an issue that if failed when updating. I may have deactivated something that is holding the operating system back. I also have some other programs installed and some of them may be buggy. I may just slowly uninstall some of the programs. I can always reinstall the programs. One of the programs is this Life-chat program with Skype that came with my headphones. I may also try setting up the multimedia center.

I may try a HD video card, but I dont have much room in my MATX Case. I will have to open the side and see how much room I have. In the mean time I will see what the RAM is doing. It might be some program with a memory leak. I can always use a Video card in the next build anyway. I probably need some canned air and good cleaning while I am at it.

Thanks for the suggestions.
 
When you say "1st update" do you mean that you only have service pack 1 installed and not 2? You should try to install service pack two if you only have sp1 right now. seems like i read it fixed a few issues with the media center stuff.

edit: Oh, the slow down after a few videos have been watched, no i don't think it is a vista issue. Or video card issue. Post back with what the RAM usage is doing this. Will be interesting to see.
 
I may have to completely reload vista to get the media ctr to work. I think I used some quick fix where I disabled it in the registry. (Yah it works but I cant remember what I changed) I just dont want to lose everything I have now on the computer. I have not tried the repair install either (I'm Chicken). I dont have a lot of movies or music just some photos and Genealogy (Family History) stuff.

I ran the windows RAM monitor while I was watching a video and it sits above 92% RAM usage. So If I want to add a Video Card and quit using the integrated video that might help a bit. Next build I will probably increase the RAM a bit and go with I-5 QUAD with 8 MEGS of cache.
 
I don't think the video card is the issue at all. Just the browser. Easy fix is restarting the browser between viewings.
 
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