new pc, vid card and monitor = crappier vid quality

[thrillhouse700]

I just purchased a dell c2d 1.8, 1gb ram, 250gb hd, vista basic, i put in an 8600gt and purchased an acer 22" monitor, running the monitor at native reso 1280x1050 with dvi cable. This combo looks badass with any game I own, but every video looks like crap. my previous rig was a shuttle p4 2.4, 1gb ram, with a shitty radeon graphics card, xp, running on my 32" olevia tv through svid. I transferred all of my music and movies (dvdrips) over to my new rig and the quality has greatly been reduced. on the old rig everything was clear with no grainyness or choppy video, now on the new rig if I try to watch a movie it looks grainy and pixellated, Ive messed with just about every setting I can find but I cant get it to look how it did on my old rig. BTW im using VLC on both computers. Any help would be appreciated im kind of bummed if this is how the new rig is going to look considering it was supposed to be an upgrade....

 

[RoBBy]

Dell mobo=u can find better(for sound try to buy a PCI sound card, i guess quality will be better)
Monotor might not have a refresh rate fast enough for what u do.

 

[hermeslyre]

A 22' with a native rez of 1280 x 1050? :\

Have you tried any other media? Download something else to test if it's everything or just the imported stuff that have the problem.