Projecting a PC screen

Feb 19, 2016
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Hiya, I want to know if I can project my PC screen to another PC wirelessly, via a lan network perhaps. Can it be done and will it impact my PC's performance?

PS: I should mention the PC I'd like to project to has a wifi card.

Cheers in advance,
Robert

 
Solution

Games are hard. Most of these remote desktop programs get speed by compressing large areas of the same color (windows) and encoding text as text instead of pixels. I think Remote Desktop uses some sort of pass-through for video to help reduce bandwidth.

Unfortunately, game graphics don't compress well, and they're not pre-compressed video so pass-through doesn't help. You need to compress their output in real-time using a video codec, and stream it to the remote computer. This will degrade quality (compression artifacts) and introduce latency (takes...
Load a VNC server on the projector PC. Load a VNC client on the projectee PC. Link the two, and you can see (and control) the first PC's screen on the second PC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Network_Computing

I use TightVNC, but I haven't really done a thorough comparison of all the options available. There are proprietary programs which server a similar function (mostly for tablets and phones) which may be more optimized (especially for gaming). e.g. Splashtop. Remote Desktop (client built into all version of Windows, server on Pro versions) is usually not an option because it locks out the physical user from the sending PC. i.e. You can only control the desktop from the PC which is viewing it - there's no way to use it to let someone watch how you do something on your desktop. You need to use their remote assistance thingy for that, which involves a bit more setup than VNC. However, it is an option too.

http://www.digitalcitizen.life/how-provide-remote-support-windows-remote-assistance
 
You have 2 options for this: remote desktop solution or WiDi/Miracast enabled PC and Display.

The remote desktop is using windows built in remote desktop program or teamviewer or a VNC like Soladri said.
For your situation the VNC is far better as it can stay locally on your LAN (vs teamviewer, logmein, etc), and with windows RDP you cant be logged in at the source PC and the remote PC at the same time.

Then there is screen casting like you do with your phone. You will need both computer and display to be miracast/widi capable which is only avaliable in select intel chips and other hardware so probability of both having this is limited.

So Solandri pretty much nailed your best option which is a VNC server type of setup.
 


Thank you very much. I have one question though, does this affect performance in any way? I want to project footage from AAA games and I'd like maximum performance. No framedrops!
 

Games are hard. Most of these remote desktop programs get speed by compressing large areas of the same color (windows) and encoding text as text instead of pixels. I think Remote Desktop uses some sort of pass-through for video to help reduce bandwidth.

Unfortunately, game graphics don't compress well, and they're not pre-compressed video so pass-through doesn't help. You need to compress their output in real-time using a video codec, and stream it to the remote computer. This will degrade quality (compression artifacts) and introduce latency (takes time to encode the video). 5 years ago you would've been laughed out of the room for suggesting it. Modern hardware is just barely capable of doing it.

The only two apps I know of which can do games in a reasonable fashion are Splashtop and Steam In Home Streaming. They will run over WiFi (802.11ac highly recommened), but ethernet is preferred.
 
Solution


I was afraid something like this would happen. Damn. Nevermind, I'm sure I'll think of something