Interesting post. I too am having this problem on my brand new 15" MacBook Pro, 2.66, i7 4gig ram. I get the same hesitations on playing podcasts (audio) and videos. I did spend an hour on the phone with Apple support and they had be go through numerous steps, including doing a complete reinstall of the operating system. They suggested that if the reinstall did not work, to bring the Mac in for service since it could be related to the video card.
As with Aibak, I notice that the scrubbing window does still advance during the silence of a podcast or the freezing of a video. During that pause, the mouse or trackpad can be non respondent to input. After the freeze (or pause), the podcast or video will start playing from the advanced position as shown in the scrubber. FYI, the videos are purchased from Apple via iTunes and the podcasts are obtained via iTunes. Also, playing Apple radio does not cause any pauses. It appears to only happen with stored media such as podcasts (audio) and video. I have not experimented with playing stored music.
The problem is random and frequency of pauses will vary. A movie can be played at one time with only a single pause occurring during the whole playback. But the same movie can be played again at another time and it may experience multiple freezes during playback. The pause will last anywhere from a few secs to 15 sec or so.
If I find anything new, I will post. In the meantime, it would be great to find a solution without the need to bring my Mac in for repairs.
Message was edited by: Petermgr
Update: Ran another test using a different video player, NicePlayer, on an avi file. While this normally runs without a problem, I just experienced a pausing problem with this player as well. During the pause the spinning wait cursor appeared.
Message was edited by: Petermgr
