Naw... I've been abusing water.
Anyway, you can connect the Eee PC to an external VGA monitor, or HDTV.
I'm positive CoreAVC doesn't have a Linux version, and it's the only thing that will decode AVC contents at watchable speed. I've tried VLC, Moonlight, and mplayer with libavcodec. Even AVC with ffdshow. None of the available open-source solutions can achieve this... sadly.

On the bright side, CoreAVC is only $8. Actually $20 if you want to get the most out of it. And anyway, you can try the codec out for 14 days. At this point, I say... it's worth it.
Edit: And did I say that the version of XP on my Eee PC has only 10 services running?
__________________
My best friend:
Kopu: Asus Eee PC 701
Next best friend: Gamu
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7200
RAM: 2GB of DDR2 800MHz (brandless, and brainless)
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 4850
Let's not get too statistical now... shall we?