Yeah quite. This is rich coming from Mozilla. "Removing user choice" has pretty much been their UX team's modus operandi for years now (and telling users they never really wanted that choice anyway; they wanted Chrome). Now they go whining to Microsoft about a lack of user choice? Go fuck yourselves, Mozilla. Only Pale Moon gives a shit about what you guys used to.

It does seem to have a microUSB socket, but as far as I can tell, that's not for passing USB signals back to the source PC; it's just for configuring the AirTame?

All the AirTame's publicity is about the one-way streaming. All I can see about USB passback is this feature request (implying it's not currently a feature): http://forum.airtame.com/t/usb-input-passthrough/133

USB is trickier, as wireless USB extenders are VERY rare. The few that I could find had all been discontinued

Out of interest, could you provide me some links even to the discontinued products?

I don't see why a wireless USB extender is such an issue. Compared to the bandwidth needed for wireless video (for which there do seem to be some solutions), the bandwidth needed for wireless USB should be very low (at least for just a keyboard and mouse), no?

Wireless keyboard/mouse is unacceptable. I hate charging my peripherals, and anyway I have a set of wired peripherals I've gotten used to and like. I generally don't like any of the keyboards they sell nowadays, with their odd layouts and stupid extra buttons etc.

It's various things to put on the TV, as I mentioned in the OP; interactive desktop computing in general, including maybe programming, possibly videos and gaming (although I do accept there may be latency and quality issues, the games I play tend to be single player turn-based anyway so that's not so much of a problem). It needs to be interactive so some media streaming device isn't what I need or want here.

Is there some reason you can't use a pi to remote desktop or VNC your desktop PC while using the TV as the pi's screen? You could probably build the entire setup for under $150.

Because then I'd have to use a wireless keyboard/mouse and I cant stand those. I want something to plug them in to. I'm guessing there's no "receiver box for USB peripherals" that could be plugged into the mains as I'd hoped, so it looks like I'm going to need to use a laptop.

Surely the keyboard and mouse is not the bandwidth problem. They use relatively little bandwidth (and with local WiFi ping time being under 10ms I don't really understand why there's a latency issue either) - I'd have thought the issue would be wireless video, the thing for which there actually do seem to be a few solutions.

I think what I'd like to be wireless would be the video. I have a set of specific wired peripherals I've gotten used to and like (and I tend to find that wireless keyboards/mice are just annoying, not least because you have to charge them).

I already laid one cat5e Ethernet cable all the way from my master phone socket to my PC upstairs when I got FTTC broadband installed. I don't care to repeat the experience. :-) It was a nightmare drilling a hole through the floor and now that we've got it done I'm not in the mood to drill any more.

Frankly, given the (rather depressing) answers here, I'm thinking the best option is me buying a laptop. I use WiFi to copy data between it and my PC, plug the keyboard/mouse into it on my coffee table, and use one of the various wireless audio/video options for casting the laptop to the TV.

I'd like to control it with a real, wired keyboard and mouse. :-)

Based on this review, actually, I think I'll give the Compute Stick a miss. The fundamental problem is that it tries to cram a whole PC on a USB stick, with predictably dodgy results. I have a whole fully-powered PC sitting upstairs - I just need to forward its video/audio downstairs, and my keyboard/mouse input upstairs!

- Wireless HDMI (can be expensive to get low latency, doesn't do anything for peripherals)
- Wireless USB hub (can be expensive last I checked, no clue how good it actually is)

I'm starting to think that using these two in tandem is the best I'm gonna get. Ideally there would be a product that bundled them up into one high-quality WiFi connection, but I'm not seeing such a product sadly.

Not necessarily cheap, but basically yes, your summary is correct. I probably wouldn't watch much media with it, and if I did, I'd probably be satisfied with low(ish) quality.

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.