I recently came across an HD player — the JVC AveLink, $360 at B&H — that works well. It plays WMV files (and they look great), Divx files and regular DVDs (but not uprezed so not so hot). It has a disk player but the best is it has a network connection. With the software that comes with it my notebook becomes the “server” and it will play any size file. It has several outputs – component for HD directly into the projector or TV. Up to 8M bitrate for WMV files. You might want to try that.