Video Quality

I have problem with video quality and there seem to be so many variables that I am now completely overwhelmed.
When I play movies from online sources like Hulu the video appears pretty good. When I download videos some look great but others not so much.
When I stream video from place like MSN or other news sources the video is almost unwatchable. It's grainy and blured. The buffering seems fine
but the video quality is terrible. I have some new hardware (below) but I'm mostly wondering about my Display. It is a new Samsung and maybe my
attempt at buying the best has backfired. It is capable of utilizeing the newest HD technology but I don't know if it is able to use the more common
media preoperly. The TV for instance (it has it's own tuner) when played without the computer comes in pretty bad but when I try it with the HD digatal
signal from Comcast it looks fantastic. I only have basic cable though and it seems it should come in at least as good as my old CRT TV. Is there a way to
ajust and test any these things in Vista or maybe a program I could get. I run my GeForce 9800GT OC at defaults and have the newest Adobe Flash. I even installed
a new BFG GX5500 Power Supply. I Would love any suggestions and thankyou.

HP Pavilion Media Center m8430f Desktop PC
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz, 2400 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
Motherboard: Asus IPIBL-LB
Memory Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 8.00 GB
Page File Space 8.29 GB
HDD: Hitachi 700GB HDS721075KLA330
Graphics Card: Geforce 9800GT OC
Power Supply Unit: BFG GX5500
Tuner: ViXS Pure TV-U 48B0 (NTSC\ATSC Combo)
Monitor\TV: Samsung SyncMaster T260HD
OS: Vista Home Premium SP2 x64

Hello FredRock,

Here is the deal with the video. Video is only going to play as good as the source file. You're equipment is pretty nice, but if the video itself is of poor quality then your playback will be of poor quality as well.

Let me give you a simple example.

Lets say you have a video, the resolution is set to 720dpi. This is a really High quality video, SHD quality. Will be play beautifully on your monitor. Will take up a lot of disk space though, around 8gb for a movie (compression and other variable not widthstanding). Same video, at 320 dpi. This is a lot lower quality, will look blocky or grainy, take up about 1gb for the same movie.

I hope this helps explain it. There truely is so much with video it is dizzying, divx decoders, and drivers, and compression methods and players makes me wanna vomit from time to time just thinking about.

I hope this helps.

-Kenneth

Try VLC as a check.