Need 'puter and digital video help

My wife purchased a new JVC HD digital camcorder and I am having problems playing the video on our computers. It seems that it records in ACVHD format (also known as .MTS) and from what I've read you need a pretty stout computer and graphics card to play these properly. My desktop is ancient but we have a new laptop. It is a lower end Acer with a ATI 1000 (1200?) graphics card and a AMD Athlon 64 processor (1.8 I believe) 2 GB of RAM. Neither will play the video clips properly.

I've tried using Splash, VLC, Quicktime and a host of other players including the one that came with it.

Do I need to upgrade my computer or is there a magical player that I can download. If I need another computer what should the minimum specs be? I plan on replacing my desktop with another laptop in the next couple of months. So getting a computer to do the job is fine, I just need to know what to buy.

Thanks

Yeah, that's not enough HP for HD video. I wouldn't call it new either, that's some pretty old stuff. I have something with similar specs in my home theater for watching streaming on hulu and netflix and it chokes on HD.

I cant believe I am saying this but starting from scratch you may want to look at getting an Imac, even a 1-2 year old one on craigslist something with a dual or quad core intel and 4 or so gigs of ram. Or new they start at around 1200. It will be capable of playing and editing your videos out of the box.

Use a program like Handbrake, etc to convert the video to a different format that will work on your machines.

AVI or MP4 are pretty common.