SPECS:
8.10 non dual boot that's less than 30 days old.
Via / AC97 onboard sound
AMD 3200+
1gig RAM

Any time I watch a video from ANY source or listen to any music using any player the sound cuts out about every 45-60 seconds and lasts for about 2-4 seconds. I can pause whatever I'm listening to or watching for a couple seconds and when I unpause the sound comes back. No errors that I've seen and other than this small hitch Ubuntu has been a godsend.

I've tried switching back and forth from OSS to ALSA to Auto and everything in between in my Sound Preferences with no luck.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Try running a different distro from a LiveCD just to make sure that it's not a hardware problem. The Knoppix LiveCD is quite popular for doing technical tests on hardware.