certain videos do not play properly

[julvar]

I've been stumped by this video problem for too long. I've posted on a couple of other forums and didn't come up with anything... and so I thought I'd try my luck with a forum dedicated to video. I would really appreciate it if someone here can figure it out.
(if this is not an appropriate forum for this problem, I would appreciate it if someone could point me to one that is. thanks in advance!)

The problem occurs when I am playing streaming videos from thedailyshow.com and colbertnation.com. The audio seems to come through properly. but the video is messed up. every half a second or so, it plays a few frames from a fraction of a second before. I wish I could explain this better but it basically ruins the video. the ads that play before the actual clips play just fine.

I have not been able to reproduce this problem on any desktop or laptop that I have been able to get my hands on.

here are my specs:
Lenovo Ideapad G550
4GB ram
pentium dual core T4200 @ 2GHz
windows 7 home premium 64 bit
display adapter: Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family
driver provider: Intel Corporation
driver date: 8/25/2010
driver version: 8.15.10.2202

I have this problem on all my installed browsers (firefox 4, chrome, IE9) - all of them are up-to-date.
Windows 7 is up-to-date. and so is adobe flash (version 10.2.153.1) and all those other plugins.

I have cable internet (TimeWarner in Santa Monica, CA). the problem does not show up on other machines on the same network.
it is not a buffering issue. youtube works fine with 380, 480, 720 and 1080p resolutions.
and so does playing pretty much any other video file. so, this has to be a software issue, right?

The problematic videos apparently uses adobe flash. the video player on the website does not have a specific 'HD' option.
from what i understand, the player/website automatically adjusts the stream speed based on the available bandwidth. here is what shows up when I just clicked the info icon on the player:
Current Available Bandwidth: 9.40 mbps
Current video stream: 450 kbps
max video stream : 825 kbps
frame rate: 29.97 fps

if it would be convenient, I would be up for a Windows Remote Assistance session. just contact me if you would like to try that. I am 'julvar' on skype.

please let me know if I can provide any other info.

thanks!

[Baldrick]

Try disable hardware acceleration in flash, http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/help01.html

[julvar]

i had tried that earlier to no avail.
but this time, i disabled 'hardware acceleration' and then refreshed the webpage. and it no longer does that weird thing with the video!
but the quality of the video was not that great.
why do i need to disable 'hardware acceleration'? does this mean that there is something wrong with my display card?
i do remember that when i had first bought the laptop (aug 2009), it was vista 64bit at the time. and when i updated the display drivers, the screen would go blank and i would have to revert to the old drivers. same thing when i upgraded to win7. i eventually had to do a clean install of win7 before i could properly upgrade the drivers to the latest version.


the link you sent had the following "For hardware-accelerated scaling to work, you need Microsoft DirectX 9 with VRAM 128MB for Windows"
so, i downloaded and installed the software from this link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=2DA43D38-DB71-4C1B-BC6A-9B...displaylang=en
1. can you confirm if this is what i actually need to install?
2. also, how do i find out how much VRAM i have?

anyway, even after i installed the 'directx' from the link above, the video still gave the problem when i had 'hardware acceleration' enabled.

[julvar]

i got the vram from the 'system information' program and it shows 'adapter ram' as 1.75 GB
does that sound right? or is that part of the laptop's main ram?

[redwudz]

Blank black video sounds like a 'Overlay' video problem. You might take a look here for a explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_overlay

Turning off hardware acceleration is one way to test out if it's the problem, but that's not a cure as it will lower the quality and performance of the video card.

Most likely it's a video card driver issue. If you are using the W7 generic default drivers, try some later ones directly from the video chip manufacturer.

[julvar]

I am using the latest drivers from intel. (not generic W7 drivers)
is there any way to know for sure if it is a hardware issue?