It really depends on what format you're viewing.
For example, 720p WMV-HD video, even at a full 10mbps bitrate, plays just fine on my 1.13GHz Pentium 3 machine. Divx-HD also plays fine on this machine.
But Quicktime HD is a totally different story. The machine above drops all sorts of frames playing 720p Quicktime media. You basically need a dual core to play the 1080p Quicktime video, while a single core 2.8GHz P4 would easily handle 1080p in the WMV-HD format.
DVDs are of much lower image resolution, and use the much easier to process MPEG2 format. Any computer will play a DVD, even my old 333MHz P2 rig. HD is of much higher resolution and image quality, and often uses a harder to process codec such as VC-1 (wmv-hd, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray) or H.264 (quicktime, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray).
Edit- just noticed that you're using a 1.4GHz P4. Those first-gen P4s weren't all the great and definitely would have a hard time with HD video. The late-model P3s were quite a bit quicker, even though they had lower clockspeeds. The 1.13GHz P3 I mentioned above plays back high bitrate (10mbps) 720p WMV-HD at around 90% CPU utilization. It wouldn't surprise me that a first-gen P4 1.4 hits the 100% mark and has to drop frames so that the video keeps up with the audio.
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