I will try that jim, thanks.
Would it suggest that's not the cause if the skipping occurs immediately upon my first video, and not "after a while" of streaming?
In other words, I can come home at the end of a day when my internet has been unplugged, plug it in, turn my computer on, go to my favorite program Media Center (theater view) and begin a video and it will skip horribly after 2 or 3 seconds, and not stop skipping even if I let it proceed for 10 or 15 minutes. In fact, now that I'm testing it a bit more, I'd say it's more likely to skip upon playing my first video. Perhaps that's a good lead to follow, because I can switch around and play many videos until the skipping stops, then I can go back and play a video that originally skipped, and it won't skip anymore. So it's not specific to the video.
Netflix doesn't have this problem.