When I watch TV shows on Hulu the video gets a little choppy. Is that a processor problem?

I have a 2.53GHz Pentium 4 and could upgrade it to 3.06GHz pretty cheaply if that would do any good. (Same socket, same bus speed)

I would think it's more related to your internet connection. What do you have there? DSL? Cable? String and tin can with network adapter?

It's much more likely to be a bandwidth problem. Either your computer isn't able to download the stream fast enough for continuous play, Hulu isn't able to upload it fast enough to keep up with your computer - or a combination of the two.

Have you tried pausing it, and letting the "Buffer" indicator that comes up move to "Full?" If you've done that, and it's still choppy, than it's something going on on your end.

I'm pretty sure it's related to the fact that the tubes that carry the internet to hawaii are being attacked by dolphins.

I use the tin can and string connection method but I my string is 100lb test so it should be fine, right?

I let the buffer get full but it's still a problem. It isn't that the video starts and stops like the connection is too slow. The audio streams perfectly but the video isn't smooth. Like, if someone said a long word in the video, a lip reader might not be able to tell what they said.

If you right click on the video and change the quality setting to low, it improves.

I'd CTRL - ALT - DELETE into your task manager and close EVERYTHING in the processes list that doesn't need to be running. You might not have enough RAM free, if that's the case. Don't worry you'll "close something bad" in that list, the worst thing that'll happen is you have to reboot your computer. Generally if under "User name" it says System, rather than Jiggy (or whatever your username is) you can close it without error.

I'm still thinking bandwidth issue, but I'm wrong a lot. As a test, go to one of those speed test sites and do a test there. With streaming video sites like that I'm right on the edge between acceptable and sucky (700 KBps download speed) so if yours is less than that then it's sucky.

Also, how much RAM do you have?

Hulu system requirements:

* Flash Player 9.0.115.0 or higher
* 2.5Mbps Internet connection or greater
* Windows: Intel Pentium 4 3GHz processor (or equivalent), 128MB of RAM, 64MB of VRAM

So yeah, it's your dinosaur that's the problem.

Too bad you gave back the camel, you could have used that instead of your dinosaur.

Regarding those Hulu minimum specs, my processor and RAM both exceed their recommendation, but my available bandwidth is below what they recommend, and I always get crappy performance at their site. I'm not sure it's a dinosaur issue.

Thanks everyone.
I never saw the hulu system requirements before. That's certainly a problem.
My upload/download speeds are all over the place since I use Clearwire which I'm sure doesn't help matters any.
I have plenty of RAM though, 1.5GB

I happened to look at the Emachine computers they sell at WalMart today and I could get a new one that would beat this dinosaur all to hell for less than $300. That's probably what I'll do instead of doing anything to this one. I just didn't want to get anything expensive because all I do with this one is post here and watch TV shows.
My 30GB hard drive is still only half full even with all the pictures I take.