What is involved in Video playback?

[Jamin43]

I'm not a gamer - and don't plan to be. But I do watch videos as part of internet content on various websites / forums. Most of the time - the video plays fairly smoothe - but other times - I get slow playback with pauses in the stream? I have been able to view High Def films posted online at various forums clearly at times.

The 5 yr old computer in question is
Windows XP - sp3
20GB hard drive with O/S & handful of applications / 160 gb slave drive
Pentium4 1.8ghz
Upgraded to max of 1GB DDR

Would a simple video card fix the above problem with streaming video playback - or are there other things ( MOBO / DDR memory / speed of processor - etc - that would cause a bottleneck that would restrict video on above computer.

Also - in general - does a video card fix most playback problems - or are there other components that have a significant impact on video playback. I have a family member with a new Dual Core compute ( $550 general purpose build ) that has simliar symptoms when playing a DVD through the disk drive.

I just started last week learning about guts in computer beyond physical install - swapping out plug and play parts.

 

[DCIScouts]

When you watch a live video from a website, you are "buffering" the video or downloading a portion of it to your computer. Once a portion of it has been downloaded, then the video automatically starts playing. Sometimes the download speed is fast enough to stay ahead of the viewing speed and you can view the video smoothly; other time the download speed is slower and then the viewing speed catches up to what has been downloaded, and then the computer has to pause playback until enough of the video has been "buffered" again to continue viewing the video.

So, in short: no, adding a video card won't solve your problem. It's more of a problem with the connection speed you have with the server that is hosting the video.