Audio Stutters When I View DirecTV in Full Screen

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
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TL;DR - When I watch DirecTV via the web on my computer in fullscreen the audio stutters. I need help fixing it.

(teh detailz)

Hey there. I’m looking for a little help with a computer issue. I know a fair bit about computers as a user but not a great deal when it comes to super technical stuff. When I watch DirecTV and a few other application/sites in fullscreen the audio stutters. I’m trying to figure out why this is and what to do about it.

I use a laptop computer (lid closed) along with an external monitor, keyboard and mouse as my “desktop” computer. The laptop is a Lenovo ThinkPad E520 and the monitor is a 25” Dell Ultrasharp 2515H running in 2048 x 1152 resolution which is recommended by Windows and I think the highest resolution the graphics driver can power.

The graphics “card” is an Intel HD Graphics 3000, That’s “integrated graphics” which means (as I understand it) the graphics processing is handled by the computer’s CPU, not by an external graphics processor. AFAIK, this means my graphics capability is not very robust but it seems to handle video playback of websites, movies, and moderately detailed games just fine.

Even though it’s an audio problem I think the issue might be with the graphics processing because if I view the image in a window that’s smaller than fullscreen size the problem goes away. Plus it’s really only the DirecTV stuff (web-based) and a couple other things (Fox Sports Go is the only one I can think of right now) that have this issue.

I have waaaaaaay more than enough internet bandwidth, I’ve updated all my drivers and software, I run various diagnostics on my computer fairly often and keep the Firefox plug-ins and extensions up to date.

Why would a weak graphics processing system affect the audio (which uses way less resources than video) but not the video? What can I do??

Help!!!

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Integrated video puts a big load on the CPU and you have made that even more problematic with a separate high res monitor requiring the video to run in absolutely maxed out resolution mode.

Close down Firefox and try running the video in Chrome.

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Thanks. That’s good advice and it makes sense. I already have tried running it in IE (just because it’s loaded on my computer); it seemed a bit better but not much. I’ll try downloading Chrome and see how that goes. But why does it affect the audio and not the video? Especially when the video demands so many more resources?