Networked monitor in linux

TheBlackCat

I am going to be getting a new laptop in a few weeks. My current laptop, although certainly not state-of-the-art, is still pretty decent (Pentium M 1.3 Ghz, 512 Ram, Geforce 4 4200 Go). Not wanting to get rid of it, I am trying to find a new way to use it. My default option is to use it as a media center box for recording TV, streaming media, etc. It already has an S-Video out and I plan to get a PCMCIA TV tuner of some sort. Since I am planning to make the switch entirely to linux with the new laptop, I want to do the same with the old one (using MythTV or something).

However, there is something I would prefer over this if it is possible (doing both would be better yet). However, I don't know what it would be called, so I don't know how to go about finding out if it is even possible.

My plan is as follows. Obviously if I am using it as a media center box I need to set up a LAN. Now I know LAN connection can have speed on the order of 100's of Mbits/sec. So I think, but am not sure, it would at least be in the realm of possibility to stream an NTSC TV signal from one computer to another over a LAN connection. So my hope was that I could use the old laptop's s-video output to set up a sort of third monitor over the network, allowing me to use the more powerful graphics card, CPU, and more RAM I will get with the new computer to handle the rendering of graphics and decoding of video and such and only use the old computer to display the image on a TV. It doesn't matter whether it is full-screen or windowed, although having the option of both would be nice.

The reason I want to do it this way is because I am already running a dual-monitor setup, the quardro card I will be getting does not support triple head, and I don't want to worry about switching X servers if at all possible (although I will if I need to).

The problem is how to go about doing this, if it is even possible. The whole thing may be impossible, or maybe there is just no software of this sort available. But if it is possible this is really what I want to do. Making it play nice with other linux apps running on the old laptop, particularly MythTV or some equivalent, would be all the better, but I will settle for dual booting or even making the laptop do this exclusively if that is what it takes.

The only things I know of that are anything like this are MythTV, which requires that I send the actual media files over the network to then be rendered by the destination computer, and Synergy, which really just shares the mouse and keyboard not applications or data. The key is I really want it to work with any application, not just video, sound files, and images, and I want to use the new computer to do all the processing.

It wouldn't necessarily have to act as a full monitor, only streaming the currently active window or something along those lines would be acceptable (preferable, actually). I would be surprised if this was possible, though. USB, firewire, WiFi, or Bluetooth connections in place of LAN would be acceptable as well (although I think they have less bandwidth than wired LAN). I am very flexible as long as it allows me to use one computer to render the image in real-time and a second to display it. It doesn't even have to be Linux, I still have a perfectly good windows XP license and I will be dual-booting Vista on my new computer (although Linux is preferable).

So does anyone have any ideas about how I would go about doing this, or whether it is even possible? I am comfortable enough with linux to mess around with configs from the terminal (like xorg.conf), compile from source, and basic scripting. If you don't know telling me a good place to ask would be greatly appreciated. Even just a name for what I am trying to do would be extremely helpful.



Edit: Nevermind, stupid question. X can do this innately, either the whole screen or just a window, encrypted no less, and without much bandwidth either. So I guess I am set. Thanks anyway.