sound cutting out

[wren]

Hi, I'm a newbie, I have a HP Media Center Pc with XP.  Whenever I try to play a video on line, I get about 10 seconds of clear sound, and then the voices start breaking up.  I've tried everything I can see to do, but it still does it.  My speakers work fine for everything but with the videos. Anyone have any ideas what could be causing the problem? Plain language please.

[ChrisXPPro]

Any or all video formats?  Only online streaming material?

All I can wonder for now is whether your flash player plug in is current - assuming most vids you'll be viewing will be FLV - YouTube etc.

It would be interesting as a comparison if you could save a vid file of the troublesome format and play it locally - there are two or three free FLV players available and quite a few ways to get a save of an FLV.

[wren]

Duh...I don't have any of my own videos on the computer, wouldn't even know how to do it. Just occasionally like to view one online.  U tube doesn't work for me, or any others I've tried.  I get the picture, but the sound cuts in and out, after about ten sec.  Don't understand why if I can get it, why it doesn't stay in all the time and not cut in and out? I don't know what a FLV player is.  How do I get one installed? Thanks for bothering to help me, I'm not a computer guru.

[ChrisXPPro]

Well - I was thinking this way as a means to test whether your problem was the streaming video when on line compared with playing direct within your computer.

To achieve a save/download of the content in YouTube etc ..... do a Google search for something like "saving video from youtube" - and you should find a number of options that will mostly be free and also mostly fairly easy to use.

Likewise a search should easily find an "FLV player" - it is a dedicated player only for these FLV files, which Win Media Player does not yet handle.  There are I think now three versions around, if not more and they are free.

If tho this is more than you want to try - let's see if anyone else can chime in with some ideas that might help.