Anyway to control the monitor of a computer on a network?

Say I have 2 computers networked in a room, one having a video out line and being close to the TV, the other further away from the TV w/o a video out line on the video card, but having more hard drive space and better sound. I want to plug the one computer to the TV to play video from computer to TV, yet don't want to stream big files over the network (WMP playing video file form other computer's HDD) and want to have the better audio quality from my main computer. So I wonder, is there any way for one computer to be able to conrol or take over the monitor of another computer on the network?

Call me crazy but I think that'd be a pretty cool thing to do, if possible.

More or less built into Windows is Netmeeting/Remote Desktop sharing. However, if you want a more universal (as in working between different versions of windows and even in linux) and secure solution (as in no longer proprietary modified MS security, but, a real one based on what everyone else in the world uses,) TightVNC is one of the best. Most solutions these days are VNC based. Personally, my favorite feature is the support for a listening server so that you can remotely share even on a firewalled system by connecting out (unfortunately, you would probably need a mouse and screen to do that.)

Do not pay for software for this. It's a total ripoff when such a free program works.

EDIT: Oh, and VNC supports compression to decrease that bandwidth somewhat.

If you are willing to use Linux or something, you could just use ssh. That's text only and it doesn't have to actually send the desktop or something, so bandwidth would probably rarely exceed a few KB/s.

Apart from a KVM switch, any other solution is going to require network bandwidth. Good luck with that.

Is there any negative effects of heavy network bandwidth use?

I'm rather uneducated on the more advanced ways of network usage, such as bandwidth.

Your individual PCs are limited to the maximum bandwidth of their current connection. Which is fine as it is, but, if you have a home network, then you're ALSO limited by the hub's maximum bandwidth. So, if you had, say, ten PCs on a 100 mbit connection to a 100 mbit hub and each of those PCs use a mere 10 mbits apeice, that's 100 right there. That's assuming the traffic is going one direction. Anyway, 100 mbits = 12.5MB/s. That's a fairly tolerable bottleneck for most things. Depending on what you are doing, that may not be a problem at all. Of course, if you thought you'd go uber cheap and buy that $10 10Mbit hub, you may be in trouble if you do a lot. ^_^ Also, there are occasional collisions slowing everything down when you have more traffic going through. More traffic increases the liklihood of that.

For what it's worth, VNC supports compression. That narrows the bandwidth that it'd use a bit more.

So if I have a 900meg video on the harddrive of one computer, and another computer on the network is streaming that video file over the network, am I going to run into problems?

There are only two computers on my Netgear RT314 router.

Even if you have 10mbit connection with only 2 computers, yo ushould be able to stream just about anything you'd want to stream.

BTW VNC is good and so is netmeeting.

~Adam

If you are going to use VNC, try UltraVNC at http://www.uvnc.com

You get file transfer, encryption and more.

TightVNC does that too.

Not sure what the real differences between them are. Just go with what you're most comfortable with, not what everyone tells you to use. In the end, even that ms netmeeting would get what you want. Keep it behind a firewall and netmeeting/desktop sharing is fine since security won't be as big of an issue (it does do a bit of encryption these days though.)

EDIT: TightVNC doesn't have the chat client for chatting with someone sitting at the other computer while sharing. Not a big deal I guess. And yes, it also has the display mirror driver, just UltraVNC makes a bigger deal of it.

The guys getting you worried about bandwidth where a remote desktop solution is involved are either clueless or smoking crack. NON ISSUE.

Remote Desktop, assuming you have XP pro or better on the machine you want to control, is a better solution than any VNC variant. Much less lag. If you have XP home or below and your stuck with VNC I prefer TightVNC

You know, sorry to sort of borrow this thread, but, on the same subject, does anyone know of a VNC incarnate that has a better resize filter on the client? I'm controlling a much lower resolution system. Better yet, anything with a mirror driver for Windows 9x (preferably stable of course, but, even unstable, if it's reasonable, would be a boon on this poor old P2 system.)

Well I don't know if you would be interested, but there is a new product that was just launched that allows you to stream/placeshift your TV from anywhere on your network or anywhere in the world with a broadband connection. Guys... This is what watching TV is all about.

Let me introduce you to the SlingBox.
http://www.slingmedia.com

I have been a beta tester for this product for a few months now and this thing is great! Let me know if you have any questions.

You know, I'll admit I sort of hijacked the thread a little, but, at least it was related... I was actually asking about something having to do with "Anyway to control the monitor of a computer on a network?" That's just spam...

You realize he's talking about the other way around, right? Not TV signals encoded and streamed (old idea, just a different implementation) but, computer played on the TV (eg HTPC kind of thing.)