None of your VHS tapes will be HD, and I doubt watching them with an HD connection to your television would be worthwhile. The component connection was the high end of analog connections for VHS tape to television. If your current television has a component input, just use that. Don't waste your money on anything else.
Your VHS machine will only give you a 500 line analog picture, no matter what connection to your television you use. Now, if you have a lot of tapes, and many of use still do, particularly porn speciality military tapes, it might behoove you to invest in a home VHS to DVD machine. That way, the best possible analog picture will be captured as digital.
Like you said, a lot of VHS never made it to DVD.
Cheers,
Dan.