It could be your internet connection. You might do a speed test at Speedtest.net and post your result. If it's your video card you should see the same thing when you watch a video that's on your computer.

There are times when Watch Series can be a royal pain with slow downloading. You might try another link, there are usually a dozen there to choose from. Also I suspect time of day and high traffic has a bearing on those programs. Try pausing the video while the buffer increases then click the start button.

Are you getting Watch Series now? It was posted that they have vanished till January 15th.

Certainly give Bob's speed test link a whirl to see how you do.

You're right Owbist. Here's the message:
"Our new TV shows project will be up on the 15th of January. We had to delete all the links until then unfortunately.

The new website will have an original design and a brand new name."

If you click on a show it will tell you no links are available. Hope I can find it with a new name. I was enjoying some of the old Columbo shows.
The problem reminds me of my first internet connection. I think it was with a 16 baud modem. You could watch the pictures load line by line and there were a lot of lines in a picture.

This post was edited by bob414 on Tue, Dec 18, 12 at 23:06

Thanks for the fast replies!
I'm on dsl. Everything else works pretty fast as long as I'm not hooked up to the router,lol. I don't have any videos saved to my computer to compare. I have thought maybe it was the streaming that is the problem, but didn't want to get into downloading videos if the problem would still be there.
I have been reading threads about this on the ubuntu forums and most people who had problems said it started working after updates but mine hasn't yet.(they are way over my head is why I am here) Got updates this morning that I thought might help, went to youtube and still the same. I am using VLC,I think.. I've tried most of the players that have good reviews for my version.
As for Watchseries, no, I haven't tried lately. I bookmarked tubewatch so I could try that but its the same deal.
I will try the speed test.

Speed test results. Ping 84ms,download 2.89mbps,upload.32mbps

Perhaps you are only paying for 'lite' service in which case your download potential is throttled.

Remember too a busy web site can be overwhelmed. A good example is the ASUS website, if you ever go there for drivers you will notice the downloading speed is somewhere around 300kbs so it does not matter how capable a computer is in those conditions.

So, no other suggestions except for speed? Please explain why back when I was on dial-up with a windows 98 computer I never had this problem. It took forever to load then,but when I did eventually get to view the video it was smooth?
Do you think maybe a different distro would work any better? I really like the linux os other than this problem.

Please explain why back when I was on dial-up with a windows 98 computer I never had this problem.

That is like saying that back in the day of the horse and buggy we never had speed traps. We are light years beyond Win98

If you have a video DVD plop that in and see if it runs smoothly, if you do not have one ask a friend to borrow one for a few minutes.

I'm not an expert so probably can't help but...

I think you have enough speed you shouldn't even need to let it buffer, but know how to do so, so it's probably not Internet speed.

Your system seems fine specification-wise. To me anyway.

I don't think or know much about video cards but I wouldn't think it would be the physical card, but I don't really know.

My wild guess would be the driver. :)

This is what mine shows when I go to "System settings"--->"Additional Drivers":

If it were me, I'd try a different driver if there's any listed there. Maybe you already have?

Other than that, I don't have a clue. I'm running 12.04 and youtube's and other videos play fine for me.

If someone else here doesn't have the answer, there's always the Ubuntu forum. Just a thought.

Edit: Just out of curiosity, does the snow in my "My Page" fall smoothly or does it stop and go as it falls?

This post was edited by chuggerguy on Thu, Jan 3, 13 at 20:40

Heh, heh, good one Chuggerguy. Yes the snow falls and it is a nice pic. How did you do that?

Some forums allow moving sigs but Gardenweb uses an entirely different format.

Thanks Chuggerguy! I have no additional drivers.How would I go about getting one? The snow falls but not smoothly.It doesn't stop and go.

Go here, the Dell site, and enter your service tag number which will be on top, side or rear, then follow along looking for the latest video drivers..

I don't know if the "snow test" means anything. I suppose I just thought that if a little gif like that stops and goes it would mean it has to be a card/graphics problem?

I don't know about getting additional Linux drivers, hopefully you can find one on the Dell site owbist pointed you to.

@owbist: I used HTML/CSS. I'm very much a novice. Just like to play around sometimes.

Although I actually used an external style sheet, in-line it would look something like this:

<BODY style="background-image: url(http://108.64.168.117/pub/stylesheetTest/snowing.gif), url(http://108.64.168.117/pub/stylesheetTest/christmas1.jpg);">

I'm just learning and have a long way to go. Gave up on getting multiple backgrounds to work in IE so I directed IE to it's own style sheet. Instead of a winter scene with falling snow, IE gets a "train". For now anyways. :)

Fixed it!!! After googling and reading, I found out I could switch from the Unity interface to Unity 2d which uses fewer resources. Since my computer is old,from 2006, the integrated graphics card can't handle video playback very well. I am financially unable to have more work done to make this work, so I'm happy I didn't give up! Just wanted to post an update and say a big "Thank you!" to all who had suggestions.

Great to read you have succeeded.

Thanks for reporting back, always nice to know someone has fixed the issues they were experiencing. Also there is the possibility a lurker might get something from your problem.

Yeah! That's what I thought. In my own experience, I lurk a lot to find answers and I always like to know the outcome.

I should have thought of that. Unfortunately, I didn't hit it off with Unity, installed "gnome-panel" and did various tweaks to make mine as close to classic Gnome as I could get. Just a personal preference. I guess I'm resistant to change, at least when I don't like the change. My current peeve is how file size is now expressed in 10nn bytes rather than 2nn bytes like it always used to be... and Windows still does. Now I look in a folder and see a 737 MB file and think yeah... I think that will fit on a 700 MB CD. Not a biggie and I realize that technically, the new way is correct but... "they didn't have to fix that!" ;)