Best places to stream movies in 4K/HD?

I’m honestly not even sure if this belongs in this sub, but I figured I’d just throw it out there since I’m kind of lost on where else to go with it.
So, I’ve been thinking about hooking my PC up to the big screen to watch movies, but I wanted to check if that’s actually a solid way to go about it. Can I still pull off decent HD quality this way? A buddy of mine was giving me some grief, saying it’s probably a subpar setup, and now I'm second-guessing everything. Like, if I ended up stuck watching stuff in an old DivX format, what kind of mess would the picture quality actually look like?

If you're rocking an LCD or plasma with at least 720p resolution, then sure.
If not, don't even bother wasting your time. You could try DivX, but if you're still using an old CRT, you're better off just sticking to a DVD player.
If you actually have an LCD or plasma capable of playing this stuff, you’ll need a decent computer—think dual-core at minimum—and a slightly better graphics card with a DVI or, ideally, an HDMI port. If your card only has DVI, you'll need to grab a DVI-to-HDMI cable, making sure it's long enough to reach from your PC to the TV.

On the flip side, there are little gadgets like this one http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=735 where you can just plug in an external hard drive and watch everything through a tiny device connected via HDMI. In that scenario, you don't even need a computer to handle the playback.

feralorca82 said:Look, if you're rocking an LCD or plasma with at least 720p resolution, then yeah, go for it.
If you don't have that kind of setup, honestly, don't even bother wasting your breath. You could try watching DivX, but if you're still stuck using an old-school tube TV, you're better off just popping a disc into a standard DVD player.
Now, if you actually have a modern flat screen that can handle it, you’re gonna need a decent little rig—think something with at least a dual-core processor and a slightly beefier graphics card that sports a DVI or, even better, an HDMI port. If your card only has DVI and lacks HDMI, you'll need to hunt down a DVI-to-HDMI adapter or cable, and make sure you get one long enough to reach from your PC all the way to the TV.

So, I'm still running a classic CRT TV and I've got zero interest in upgrading because this thing does the job just fine for me. You mentioned it’s better to just use a DVD player, but man, I haven't had any luck there... I bought a few different players over the years and they all crapped out on me within a year, and some of them couldn't even touch HD resolution to begin with. As for those DivX files? Forget it. Every single time I tried watching one on the TV, the picture quality was absolutely soul-crushing.

I am running a dual-core setup with a DVI output on my computer.

ambereagle31, maybe give it a shot on this subforum.