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I am trying to get Netflix to work on my Ubuntu netbook. I know it will not run in Linux so I am trying it in my Win XP virtual machine. It streams the video but the sound and video are out of sync and the video often freezes and jumps. I have tried Firefox, Chrome, and even IE. I am thinking my Atom N455 processor does not work well with virtualization. All other apps in the VM work fine. The only issue is streaming [YouTube is jumpy too].

Does anyone know of Virtualbox settings I can try to possibly fix this issue or am I out of luck?

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Firstly, make sure you install the virtualbox guest tools. This will surely speed up the virtualization. Also, try increasing the amount of memory you give the VM. Although I'm assuming you don't have much memory to work with as I'm guessing your Atom N455 is in a Netbook, probably with 1 GB of RAM. Also, which version of windows are you running. You might want to try with Windows XP or even earlier (although I don't think anything earlier will run Netflix). Also, try adjusting the video quality on your movies, you can make it play in SD if you want. Lastly, you may just not have enough power to do this. Running in a VM is pretty slow. It's not really designed to do multimedia things like video and games. Most applications work alright, but anything with lots of moving stuff on the screen tends to be pretty slow.

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Guest tools are already installed. I have 1/2 of my RAM devoted to the VM (currently 512MB). As I stated in the question I am using Windows XP. I have already tried every setting of video quality on Netflix. Although the streaming issue is not just with Netflix. – Kevin Sep 3 '11 at 20:06
You will probably experience the same problem with any video, streaming or not. It seems like quite a lot of work for an Atom processor. Perhaps you should dual boot for watching movies in Netflix. – Kibbee Sep 3 '11 at 22:03
A mpg I copied to the virtual machine's desktop has a sound to video lag. You hear the words about a second before the character mouths the words. So regular video is not good but it is not as bad as streaming video, since the freezing and jumping is not there. I do not want to have to reboot just to watch a video. – Kevin Sep 3 '11 at 23:15

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