Media devices may stream a wide variety of content for presentation. Described herein are systems, devices, and methods for improving the presentation of the content. The media device may execute a pipeline architecture comprising a sequential execution of a plurality of threads. The threads may include a decryption thread, a decoding thread, and a rendering thread. The media device may include buffer queues between the threads, which enable continuous content presentation when one or more of the threads fail to communicate with another thread. The media device may pause the presentation of content by suspending the execution of the rendering thread. In one implementation, the media device replaces a stale frame that is displayed after performing a seek function with a black frame. In another example, to maintain content presentation, the media device drops video frames if an audio video lag event occurs.