I am imagining your Samsung TV does not have any Smart TV features, otherwise you would go direct.
Yes, your idea will work, as long as your laptop has audio out on the HDMI port (anyone knows why this is somethings the case?). Not all windows laptops have this, I was gravely disappointing to end up with such a laptop. It perfectly streams HD video out through the HDMI cable, but totally soundless - I also have to connect an audio cable to the sound-out socket and plug that into my hifi, which also needs to be switched on and to the right settings... if I didn't have a harmony remote, it would be too much effort to do this
Anyway, presuming your HDMI does have sound:
Pros:
* Yes, this should work, and if the Netflix stream on the internet is in HD, and your laptop has enough grunt to handle it, then you should get a fine HD video on your television.
* It's cheap, as you probably only need an HDMI cable
Cons:
* You will have a horrible user interface. There are things that can make it better, but it's still quite bad. Certainly not sofa friendly...
Anyway, there are cheap alternatives if a decent UI is something you want.
1) Get yourself a Roku box. The cheapest costs 50quid or so and will get you BBC iPlayer, Crackle and Netflix (the cheapest plays only 720p HD, so if you want 1080p you will need to buy a more expensive one)
2) If you already have an iOS device, you may want to consider the Apple TV. This also has Netflix, but nothing else for the UK - that said, with an iOS device, you can AirPlay some great UK on-demand stuff to your TV including BBC's iPlayer and ITV (Demand5 also AirPlay, but it's not very good yet)
These are just two low cost options that will cost you more than just a cable, but you will be thankful for the better UI. You will still need the Netflix subscription of course.
Of course, you can test things by just connecting your laptop to your TV right now and play HD BBC streams for free.
Netflix also has a free month to test out the service, so why not just give it a go.
www.eyeondemand.com - blogging about global internet TV