Playing back a 720p video stutters in VLC

[PlayWithFire]

I was watching "Paprika" last night, which turned out to be a pretty good movie. I was watching it though VLC on a laptop, connected to a TV, and during scenes where there was a lot of movement, and a lot of colors, a frame would freeze until the scene slowed down, and then went back to playing normally. I am assuming this is just because the laptop can't handle the video, but i was wondering if there are any ways to improve the playback in the future. I will try killing off any unnecessary processes, but what else can i do? Will a different player work better?
Thanks!

[Baldrick]

What kind of video codec? 720p mpeg2 or h264 or xvid/divx??

For h264 you can try latest ffdshow together with media player classic or the coreavc codec(it's not free though). Another player you can try is mplayer together with a gui.

[PlayWithFire]

thanks, i'll give ffdshow a try