Video randomly distorts at times. Why?

I've had my MacBook for about a year and it has always done this. I'll be watching a movie and it'll distort/pixelate for a few seconds and then go back to normal. The sound will cut out for that 1-2 seconds as well. It's not the movies, I know that for a fact. I'll rewind it when it happens and it won't happen again at that particular part. It's not the applications I use to play the movies.. i've tried several.
I tried researching this a little and saw there were known problems with video cards in some MacBook Pros. But I bought mine in mid 2010 and I believe the issues were with computers sold before then. I could be wrong about that though. It's at a point now where I don't know what's causing this and I want to resolve the issue. I'm starting to watch movies more from my Mac to my TV and it's beginning to get annoying.
Here are the specs direct from my MacBook Pro box:
2.4GHz Intel Core i5 Processor, 3MB shared level 3 cache
4GB of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
320GB 5400-rpm hard drive
15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen display; 1440 by 900 pixels
Intel HD Graphics
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics processor with 256MB of GDDR3 memory
Built-in iSign video camera2
8x slot-loading SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD+RW/CD-RW)
Mini DisplayPort
SD card slot, FireWire 800 port, two USB 2.0 ports
Optical digital audio/analog audio input and output ports; built-in stereo speakers
Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet
Built-in AirPort Extreme wireless networking (802.11n)3 and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Backlit keyboard and ambient light sensor
Preinstalled Mac OS X and iLife
Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

I'll be watching a movie and it'll distort/pixelate for a few seconds and then go back to normal. The sound will cut out for that 1-2 seconds as well. It's not the movies, I know that for a fact.
What of movies are you watching? Commercial, rental, home made, etc.?
It's not the applications I use to play the movies.. i've tried several.
And those were?
there were known problems with video cards in some MacBook Pros. But I bought mine in mid 2010 and I believe the issues were with computers sold before then. I could be wrong about that though.
I have a 2008 Macbook Pro and I have never had the type of issues you are describing. Have you tried a drive cleaner or a disc cleaner?

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Last edited by Greduan (2014-11-14 00:17:51)

@kalos
Uninstalled everything PA, also uninstalled mangler which was the only thing that depended on PA. It didn't work anyway.
No pulseaudio --kill command so I couldn't run.
Checked systemd journal and there is no mention of PA this time.
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_ vlc Videos/anime/fmab/01.mp4
VLC media player 2.1.5 Rincewind (revision 2.1.4-49-gdab6cb5)
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Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object size does not accept value "0"
[0x7fb604001248] main vout display error: Failed to resize display
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@nomorewindows
I see. That's too bad. At least we're not alone.
Last edited by Greduan (2014-11-14 01:34:29)

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