The 10 Foot Problem

The beast is up and running, a set of data is downladed, movies, photos, music, videos, TV recordings and its time to try it out. The first thing is how do you control it from the sofa in the living room? (the 10 foot reference in the title) I really wanted is to have a facsimile of what is on the TV screen, so I can see all of the control screens of WMC and browser, not 10 feet away, cos the peepers are not great, but on a tablet 10 inches away. Is it possible? It seems so at first look.

I looked at several options  - standard windows features like Remote Desk Top, Remote Assistance, -  the office type features like Net Meeting or Linq as it now know or the equivalent proprietary stuff like Teamviewer, Join Me, Quick Screen Share. Then there are the commercial Android Apps like the specific WMC controllers or the more general purpose Android PC Mouse and Keyboard simulations. Finally there are the real wireless PC Mouse and Keyboards.

I could not really get the windows features to work well enough. RDT works, but it normally works in a single user mode, so logs off the TV PC before you can control anything. I didn't pursue the multiple session hacks that are around.  RA also works and of course keeps both screens working once control is delegated to the remote controlling PC. It is not great though, very jittery and it doesn't seem to work once you go full screen on the TV PC, the local controlling screen goes totally black and you cant see to control anything further. I tried Quick Screen Share, which is a nice piece of freeware, but I had the same sort of problems as I had with RA.

I next tried one of the Android Apps, Unified Remote. I installed this on my smartphone. It can use both Bluetooth and Wifi. I used Wifi and it was perfectly functional. It comes with specific menus, like WMC, Window Start Button as well as a touchpad mouse and keyboards.

My next task is to actually set it all up in the living room and let DB loose on it for testing.