yes, what you are trying to do is possible. the "streaming howto" that you can can find under "documentation" on the videolan.org homepage tells you basically all you need to know, but its a bit hard to get into when you don't know where to begin.
i'll try to keep it short: you need VLC on both computers. the VLC install on your laptop will act as a server, and at the same time display the video data that it is processing live on screen. thats possible, because VLC supports multiple output methods simultaneously. your surround system will obviously act as a client only.
lets assume you are on your laptop now, and want to open a video file. do that by opening the dialog window under "file/open file" in the VLC menu. then select your file. on the bottom of the window you will see an area that is labeled "advanced options". check the "stream/save" box, and click the "settings" button.
the window that is appearing now is the key to what you want to do. it allows you to select various output methods. first of all, you will want to see your video, so you will have to check the "play locally" box. now there are different protocols that you could use to stream the file to your surround system. i suggest http streaming, because i believe it has the least amount of traps that you could fall into. simply check that option, enter your laptops address (on windows "localhost" probably suffices... on linux i once had to enter the computers real ip address - in your case the address on the LAN), and choose a port. then choose a method to encode your audio with, as well as an encapsulation method. valid encoder/encapsulation methods are listed in the VLC documentation that you can easily find on the homepage.
then you're set to go, and you can start playing your file.
now the video (and audio, but you can mute that) should be playing on your laptop. on your surround system, you will have to instruct VLC to open the url that consists of your laptops ip address, and the port you are streaming on (no filename required). for example "
http://192.168.1.3:1234".
well, my suggestions are kind of incomplete, but i hope that - with the help of the documentation - you now at least have an idea on how to solve your problem.
P.S.: once you found a good config for your server, save the instructions that appear in the "target" input box. the GUI is only a tool to construct this syntax.