Newbie: Video files advice

[Confiteor]

Hello,

I have an AMD Athlon 900 pC upstairs linked to a 1MB broadband connection which I use to download DivX films (typically 700MB in size).

I plan to network this PC with my 233MHz Compaq PC downstairs, which I have linked up to my PC.

My problem is that the 233MHz PC is not capable of playing the 700MB DivX files properly. The minimum specs advised for full-screen DivX video are PII 450 or above.

Now, my question is this. Is there a way of setting up my network so that the stronger machine upstairs actually does the 'donkey work' of playing the video files, while the older one downstairs just does the job of collecting the video signal and passing it through into my TV?

It would also be handy if I could use the downstairs PC to select the files for my better PC upstairs to play.

I have never networked before, and have only just had broadband installed, so please excuse my ignorance.

Thanks in advance for any responses.

Cheers.

[Greenstead]

Thats an interesting question which I am also interested in doing.

You need a PC downstairs with the divx player on it and a video card with TV out. You can connect to a shared drive on the upstairs PC and play the file.
Does it work - not for me - the playback is jerky (frame dropping)and no use even though it does not use anything like the thro-put avalable on the network. I was using a wireless link so maybe 100Mb wired link would help. Something to do with TCP/IP and the data flow over the network I guess. Maybe streaming is needed.

A more specialised forum is needed I think to help with this. You might try asking on the DIVx forums. I would like to know the answer if you find out.

It will work if you copy the file temporarily onto the downstairs PC - but thats not what you (or I) want to do really.

There is another option. Remote control the upstairs PC and playback upstairs, output from the video card to a wireless video sender and beam it to the TV.

Just ideas.