I find it difficult to believe that you can get a device that'd have problems playing back a Netflix stream. Even Intel integrated graphics can scale a 720p stream to 1080 without issues, unless you use a pixel shader-based upscaling algorithm.
The mid-range laptop I am currently typing on has trouble displaying video fluidly at times which is most likely due to it's lack of a dedicated video card.
My desktop which is running the exact same operating system and core programs plays video much more fluidly, and it has a dedicated (still extremely weak and outdated) video card.