spl00g

OK so I wasn't sure where the best place for this question would be so here it is.

I am looking to buy an external hard drive (probably 1TB) to store some of my movies and tv shows on. my overall goal in doing this is to be able to easily transfer anything from my pc onto the hard drive and then plug the hard drive into my tv or when traveling into someone elses tv. currently i have a crappy old tv but am looking at buying a new lcd tv. so my question is what kind of things can you guys recommend as far as what to make sure my tv has for hookups. I'd also like to know what the easiest way to make the hard drive show up on the tv. is it through a dvd player or is there another way to do it?

so far I'm looking at probably just buying a dvd player with usb ports and the capability to playback videos. hopefully there is a simple way to make it so that it can go external hard drive directly to tv is what I'm looking for so i can take the hard drive to a friends house and still have it work.

thanks for replies in advance