Stutters/ jittery while playing movies

Although most movies play fine, there are certain movies that the picture wont run smoothly ( very hard to describe ) kind of stutters/ very jittery every few seconds. I know it’s not the file though as it plays perfectly on my laptop. What is the problem?

What type of movies files are you trying to play? .AVI, .MKV, .MOV, etc.?

mainly MPEG 4 or mp4,  the occasional MKV. 

Check if you have the latest firmware installed. Also some movies might have a really high bit rate that the media player can’t handle. Are you trying to play HD 720/1080P videos, or regular standard definition videos?

im pretty sure i dont have the latest firmware, i have NTFS. how do i install the new one ? i am trying to play 720p movies its hit and miss, some work some dont. whats the easiest way to reduce the bitrate without losing quality ? 

Check over  here and click on the one that you have to find the firmware. I use Xilisoft video converter to change the bitrate. Also try using another video format to see if it works better.

I have big doubts, that upgrading the firmware will help: the chipset (RealTek) does the video decoding (and not any soft/firmware).

Video recoding (e.g. to reduce the bitrate) always means loss of quality and is CPU intense. Much more important than the bitrate is the encoder settings … and the tuning of the parameters is close to black magic.