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November 26, 2009 11:02 AM   Subscribe

Mac: How can I share a screen, including video, without lag? Help me be a game host on a budget.

My friends and I are playing a quiz this weekend. We want a setup like you'd see on a TV game show: two teams facing each other, each looking at a screen that shows questions and video clips.

I'm looking for a solution to show the same content on the two screens. Because it's for a game, there can be no delay between the two screens.

I've got two 23" Apple Cinema Displays, and two MacBooks. I do not have a screen splitter (if such a thing even exists for DVI?), so I'm looking for a software solution.

The easiest would be to use one laptop as a primary machine, and share the screen via a network connection to the other. They can be directly connected, so bandwidth shouldn't be a problem. The problem is that every screen sharing solution I've tried introduces a lag, which I want to avoid.

I've tried Apple Screen Sharing / VNC, Vine server, VLC streaming (via screen://) and iChat over Bonjour. Is there any solution I've forgotten? If I can't get it to work I'll just run the Keynote presentation on the two laptops simultaneously, but I'm afraid there might be some hiccups with embedded video, leading to an unfair advantage for one of the two teams. Is this achievable? How do I do this?
posted by lodev to Computers & Internet (2 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: Try the JollysFastVNC client - it's much, much faster than any other VNC client on OS X.

Also, you can try Screen Recycler, slave the Cinema Display on thesecond Macbook to the first, and turn on mirroring. This should give you a solid, fast mirrored display over the network. Preferably have a wired Gigabit connection between the machines.
posted by krilli at 11:56 AM on November 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Thanks krilli, that's exactly what I needed! Screen Recycler set to a very high rescan rate + JollysfastVNC client works perfectly.
posted by lodev at 12:48 PM on November 26, 2009


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