Sending a desktop to a big screen

[Amit Prahesh]

Hi there,

imagine a medium sized office room, where four engineers hack away (all of
them currently have Fedora 22 workstations, to stay on topic.) On that room
there's a fifth PC, hooked to a big TV on the wall (also running F22) that
has Firefox running full screen with some visualization of sorts (dashboard
thingy). Those five computers are all on the company wired network...
nothing you haven't seen a thousand times before.

Now, Sally, one of the engineers wants to share her desktop with the others
and uses application XYZ to project/cast/extend/send it to the big TV (via
its PC, of course). All of them discuss whatever was on her mind, and five
minutes later, she closes application XYZ and the office goes back as it
was before. Fred wants to do the same, and he does. Actually all of them
can.

They asked me what is XYZ.

I was thinking on a member of the VNC family, but what they want to do is
the reverse of what one normally do with VNC. To make things more...
interesting? XYZ must never go out of the corporate LAN and if it were Open
Source, the better.

Any ideas on XYZ?

Best regards,
Amit.

PS. Erm... one last thing. If there's a solution, could it include sending
the audio as well?

[Suvayu Ali]

On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 11:04:36PM -0400, Amit Prahesh wrote:
> Now, Sally, one of the engineers wants to share her desktop with the others
> and uses application XYZ to project/cast/extend/send it to the big TV (via
> its PC, of course). All of them discuss whatever was on her mind, and five
> minutes later, she closes application XYZ and the office goes back as it
> was before. Fred wants to do the same, and he does. Actually all of them
> can.

It seems you want to screencast, something like chromecast I guess, but
interactive sessions.  I do not know of any such program.  I can think
of two hacks though.

1) You can use your company's video conferencing setup to screen share
   with the desktop with the big TV.

2) Just unplug the TV from the desktop and plug your laptop in, and
   extend your display.  I have a script that will automatically pick the
   optimal resolution for the display using xrandr.  You can write
   something like that yourself (or if you like the idea, I can send my
   script).

Hope this helps,

[Amit Prahesh]

On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 4:23 AM, Suvayu Ali 
wrote:
> It seems you want to screencast, something like chromecast I guess, but
> interactive sessions.  I do not know of any such program.  I can think
> of two hacks though.

You are right about that. The closest existing thing, as far as I know, is
an Android device miracasting to a TV. Note, however, that the remote
display is dumb, in the sense that for as long the remoting session is up,
it will do nothing but show the desktop.

Thanks,
Amit.

[Carlos A. Carnero Delgado]

Hey,

On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 10:13 AM, Amit Prahesh 
wrote:
> You are right about that. The closest existing thing, as far as I know, is
> an Android device miracasting to a TV. Note, however, that the remote
> display is dumb, in the sense that for as long the remoting session is up,
> it will do nothing but show the desktop.

So, got any solution for this? I'm also interested...

TIA,
Carlos.

[Doug]

On 08/17/2015 06:31 PM, Carlos A. Carnero Delgado wrote:
> Hey,
>
> On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 10:13 AM, Amit Prahesh <[e-mail] 
> > wrote:
> You are right about that. The closest existing thing, as far as I
> know, is an Android device miracasting to a TV. Note, however,
> that the remote display is dumb, in the sense that for as long the
> remoting session is up, it will do nothing but show the desktop.
>
>
> So, got any solution for this? I'm also interested...
>
> TIA,
> Carlos.

One of the advantages of Pulse Audio (now that it seems to work!) is the 
ability to send two video + audio
paths to different monitors, specifically by an on-board sound chip and 
a GeForce video card with sound
sending its video to a local monitor, and video + audio output to a TV 
via an HDMI port.  (Local sound comes
from the mobo chip.) I too have a TV in different room, and I ran an 
HDMI cable thru a short piece of PVC pipe
thru the wall to the TV. You will need a method of preventing the 
display from timing out. Lisi recommends
inputting xset -dpms. I haven't tried that yet, as I won't be home until 
the end of the week. If that doesn't work,
a mouse jiggler will.

--doug

SV: Sending a desktop to a big screen

[Birger Monsen]

I have not tried this, but you can run the vnc viewer in "listening" mode on the big screen tv, then run vncconnect on a workstation to connect an existing vnc server there to the viewer. Could be worth a try.

Sendt fra min Sony Xperia™-smarttelefon

---- Amit Prahesh skrev ----
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[Carlos A. Carnero Delgado]

On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 7:27 PM, doug  wrote:
> One of the advantages of Pulse Audio (now that it seems to work!) is the
> ability to send two video + audio
> paths to different monitors,...

Wow... I didn't know PulseAudio was able to do that. Must check the docs...

Thanks a lot,
Carlos.

[Carlos A. Carnero Delgado]

On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 7:40 PM, birger  wrote:
> I have not tried this, but you can run the vnc viewer in "listening" mode
> on the big screen tv, then run vncconnect on a workstation to connect an
> existing vnc server there to the viewer. Could be worth a try.

Is this the same idea or mechanism as reverse vnc? Or "tech support mode",
as sometimes can be found?

I think it could work, yes.

Thanks a lot,
Carlos.