Preview movies without using WMP
 

Is it possible to preview movies using another application, such as VLC. It stutters in WMP

Definitely is & a lot of people use VLC b/c of it's in-built codecs & ability to play almost all formats including the newest. But VLC will need to become your default program to play those video type files when launching frm LW; See: Setting Default video app
Get VLC here: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ (choose nearest mirror site)