Video Stuttering in media center

Recently I've started having problems with video playback in media center.
I've tried different sources (USB HDD and SATA HDD) with the same result; the video suffers from horrible stutter. The audio is OK though.
Playback in media player is OK, but has poor sound quality instead (distorted).
VLC player is all good except scaling issues.

Is it possible to adjust buffering in media center, since that obviously seems to be the issue.

Note: It used to be good, but suddenly it has become an issue. Maybe a silent update to windows has done something.


I have disabled almost all windows features, like ready boost, indexing etc - no improvement

RAM - 2GB
GFX - GeForce 8800
CPU - Core2Duo 2.8 Ghz


Does anyone have a clue to what this might be

Cheers

Daniel

I suspect it may be something you have installed recently that may be causing this particular problem.

Review anything you have installed recently that may be related to video (eg codecs, dvd player firmware etc)