I'm one of those old-fashioned people who isn't obsessed with widescreen, and I only use a 1280x1024 resolution on my PC; not 1080p.

Otherwise, why not just use what you already have and set up network shares on the PC?

Because I'm thinking of more interactive things that just video, in addition. Like browsing the web and doing email stuff. Maybe even some Visual Studio development. It can just be nicer doing that in the living room on a comfy sofa with the TV than in the study.

There are some issues in what you want to do. Some free video sites go to great lengths to prevent you from watching them on a TV

This solution would involve streaming the video from the PC onto the TV. If it can be streamed onto the PC, it could be streamed onto the TV. I'm not really seeing the problem there.

Basically I'm looking for a solution that would be just like plugging a laptop into a TV, but instead, it's wirelessly connecting a desktop (probably using WiFi).

That's not all I want to do. I want to interactively control my computer from in front of my TV, too.

I don't see how AirTame fulfils my requirements. It doesn't have slots I can plug a keyboard/mouse into, interactive with the upstairs PC. It's still just about streaming audio/video one-way.

Yeah, but this is a bit of a "when you have to" instance. Running wires all the way downstairs isn't really much of an option. Surely these days we have reliable enough WiFi to allow this, if the WiFi hotspot were dedicated to this sole purpose?

It doesn't seem to be quite what I'm looking for, though; instead of forwarding through the video/audio/USB/etc. from my main PC, it actually acts as a separate computer. I'm literally looking to just take remote control of the PC as if it were sitting there wired up to the TV.

The UI in 10 does look nice

That just goes to show that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As far as I can tell, EVERYTHING has become a monochrome "white-on-dark" or "black-on-white" mid-90's style WordArt icon, to the point where you can't tell some of them apart. They look butt ugly. Why UX people these days think that removing colour from the icons/glyphs, an important visual clue as to the icon's meaning, is beyond me. I'll keep my colourful Windiows 7, thanks. It doesn't run on a mobile phone, but I don't need or want it to.

This is exactly the instinctive worry I had about Windows 10, and why I probably won't be touching it with a barge pole.

They abuse the Windows 7 update system to spam a free upgrade to Windows 10 in the system tray (it took me a registry hack to remove the damn thing!) - what's the catch? Looks like the catch is, your data won't be safe, they'll serve up advertising in distracting Metro Live tiles, and they'll ruin the user interface into the bargain by designing it for mobile phones.

Glad I'm sticking with Win7 and Linux. I won't switch unless I'm absolutely forced to.

In practice, your friend is extremely rare. Virtually everyone wants to stream some live video, whether on TV or thru the internet, and it's utterly unfair that they should have to pay for the Biased Bullshit Corporation in order to do so. My point stands.

introduce subscriptions, but this is more problematic than it seems at first glance. Would still need geoblocking + subscriptions for outside the geoblock, because otherwise the current practice in the UK of not caring where and what I'm streaming to will fall apart

You just talked about introducing subscriptions. So yeah, you would ditch the practice of "not caring where and what they are streaming to". The TV licence is an anachronism that should have been scrapped DECADES ago. It hangs on because enough people like enough BBC programming that they selfishly think EVERYONE in the UK should have to pay for it. Well I don't.

Great. Now when are they going to offer IPv6? A gigabit bandwidth should be enough for anyone (for the new few 100 years anyway) so time to start concentrating on native IPv6 support as the next "killer feature".

Anyone have a mirror of this stuff?

Heh. Literally the first words out of my mouth were "Is that something from Monty Python? because it's not at all funny."