MPEG-2 : Jerky playback of recorded TV shows using QuickTime

Hi
I am trying to use QuickTime to playback recorded TV shows on a new Intel Core Duo Mac Mini.
The MPEG files themselves have been captured using a Hauppauge WinTV card on a Windows machine - and on this machine (and every other Windows machine), the files play fine.
I have purchased the MPEG-2 QuickTime component for Mac OS X, but I have noticed that when I try to play the files on a Mac, playback seems to drop a frame or two every few seconds, resulting in jerky motion which becomes difficult to watch after a while!
I have tried playback on several macs - an iBook, iMac G5 and the Intel Mac Mini, at different resolutions, and all appear to suffer with the same problem. I am running QuickTime 7.0.4 - all Macs have sufficient RAM available, and using Activity Monitor it does not seem that the machines are overly loaded whilst playing.
Is there a to configure the MPEG-2 component to get around this problem? Or is there a limitation with the types of MPEG-2 file that the QuickTime component will play? Ideally, I do not want to have to transcode my TV recordings, just to get them to play properly on a Mac.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
John

Hi there - thanks for your reply.
It appears I may have mis-reported some information during my earlier post(sorry!). It appears that on the Intel Mac Mini, the clips will play fine in full-screen through QuickTime, but suffer quite badly when played back through FrontRow - as I mentioned earlier, the file jerks every second or so. (QT Playback on the other machines seems to vary in quality - but I am not as concerned about this at the moment - I just want to be able to view these videos in FrontRow!).
I ran the clip through the Fix Timestamps option in MPEG streamclip, but it found nothing to repair. When I show file info in MPEG streamclip, it reports:
Type: MPEG program stream
Duration: 1:04:28
Data Size: 2.11 GB
Bit Rate: 4.67 Mbps
Video Tracks
224 MPEG-2, 720 × 576, 16:9, 25 fps, 4.35 Mbps, upper field first
Audio Tracks:
192 MP2 stereo, 48 kHz, 256 kbps
Stream Files:
TestTVRecording.MPG (2.11 GB)
So it seems that the problem, at least on the Intel Mini, is limited to FrontRow.
Surely, though, Front Row is just using the same QuickTime playback mechanism as QuickTime Player itself?! What other processing could FrontRow be doing during playback that would have such an imact?
I am looking to use the Mac Mini as a HTPC - I have it hooked up to my TV and am hoping to use it to play recorded TV shows from my Windows box. I've only had the box a couple of days, and am quite surprised that a dual core intel machine is struggling so badly with a simple mpeg2 file that my old 1ghz windows laptop will quite happily play!!
I appreciate that FrontRow is in it's infancy, but even so, I wasn't expecting my new machine to be struggling like this!
Any further suggestions greatly appreciated.
John

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    Format version                   : Version 4
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