Watch full HD Videos on a supported TV from a laptop without a full HD display

If you attempt to clone the laptop screen to the external monitor, you will only get 1366x766, however, if you use the external monitor as either extend or as the only monitor, you will get 1920x1080.

Please note that the laptop screen resolution should be in the specifications when you buy it - unlike CRT monitors, flat panels are made up of a set amount of pixels and whilst you can choose a lesser total and "stretch" (or letterbox), you can never go bigger than the total (excluding on a few graphics cards which allow panning - but this is rare now).

1. Your VGA connection will support HDMI playback. It's a matter of your computer decoding whatever the HD file contains into the correct output display format. HD will depend on if your TV and video card is able to support a resolution at 1080p (or any other HD resolution).

2. The video card will have to take the data from the player, and display it on the screen. So larger frames in the video will make the video card work harder. Programs like VLC may ask the video card for help too, to decode the HD video container.

3. Your monitor does not need to have HDMI in order to support 1080p, 1920x1080 is a resolution, DVI and VGA can handle these resolutions as long as your monitor provides it.

4. VLC contains all the necessary codecs in order to decode HD videos. Your hardware seems sufficient to decode these videos (though it may seem you lack some juice in your hardware). You have a 21'' monitor, depending, it may not support HD resolutions which are 1080 or 720.