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I need to be able to see the desktops of 4 separate PCs at the same time. Ideally I'd like to avoid using 4 monitors. A KVM won't do the trick because I need to see all 4 displays simultaneously. Is this possible with a special monitor or maybe some kind of adapter that would merge all 4 video inputs into a 2x2 grid?

Edit - the applications will be running 3d graphics so any kind of remote desktop solution would need to be able to handle a decent frame rate.

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  • What OS are the PCs running?
    – Chris_K
    Commented Nov 20, 2010 at 23:14
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    Do you just need to see them, or actually interact with them? This will make a HUGE difference in how to go about it. If all you need is to modify a signal path to display multiple inputs on one monitor, that is easy. If you want to actually be able to use the desktops that are displayed, that is much much more difficult.
    – MaQleod
    Commented Nov 20, 2010 at 23:58
  • XP or Win 7. Just need to see them not necessarily interact - but bonus points for both!
    – Josh Rickard
    Commented Nov 21, 2010 at 1:16
  • Not sure why you'd want to be running 4 separate PCs on one monitor as opposed to the conventional 1-really powerful-PC + multiple monitors.
    – JFW
    Commented Nov 21, 2010 at 4:27
  • Reading through the answers and comments, I'm thinking it would be helpful to know what is preventing you from using multiple displays. That might help us in coming up with the optimal answer.
    – nhinkle
    Commented Nov 21, 2010 at 5:59

8 Answers 8

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These quad screen splitters are pretty expensive:

SmartVM

Network Technologies

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    Fast, right, cheap... that does what he asks, and does it right... expensive is the thing he can't control.
    – WernerCD
    Commented Nov 21, 2010 at 2:50
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    Although... for $4k... it might be cheaper to just get 3 more monitors with a KVM for a single keyboard/mouse... hard to say...
    – WernerCD
    Commented Nov 21, 2010 at 3:03
  • Love the idea, but for that price, I think I would try and make 4 monitors work.
    – Troggy
    Commented Nov 21, 2010 at 4:11
  • Thanks, marking your answer as the accepted solution based on my original question. With the price, though, I will probably be going with a 4 screen solution.
    – Josh Rickard
    Commented Nov 21, 2010 at 19:29
  • @WernerCD I am trying this setup now and I'm curious if there's a way to do this using software and not remote desktop? I am developer so my initial though is write something or extend something already written
    – Sam Hammamy
    Commented Aug 14, 2016 at 19:20
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I think a viable solution would be to run 4 instances of Remote Desktop Connection - this would definitely work in the XP case, and appears to be supported in Windows 7 as well. If you have a good-sized monitor, you can tile the sessions and have full interactivity with all of them. You can also zoom into one for a short period of time if needed.

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  • Based on the above new information about 3D graphics, I suspect remote desktop or VNC won't be very good. Frame rates for VNC are usually not good. Remote desktop usually does better but it does not handle DirectX (as far as I know), meaning you may not get anything at all by going that path.
    – quickly_now
    Commented Nov 21, 2010 at 1:59
  • If you have Windows 7 Ultimate or Enterprise on the remote computers, and any version of Windows 7 on the client computer, you get somewhat accelerated graphics over remote desktop. On a LAN, especially if you use gigabit ethernet, the framerates should be fast enough to see 3D graphics if they aren't too intensive. Aero works over it.
    – nhinkle
    Commented Nov 21, 2010 at 2:22
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    Rather than saying "Framerates will be bad" - I think it would be better to ask "How important are framerates?". Just because it needs to be visible, doesn't mean it needs to be fancy. You can tone down stuff - backgrounds, screen size (Children can be 800x600... parent can be 1080x900 or whatever), disable stuff that's not needed (Especially in RealVNC or similar). I'd go this route DEPENDING on what actually needs to be visible. If its just text, great. If it's graphics/video... not so great.
    – WernerCD
    Commented Nov 21, 2010 at 2:46
  • Just saw the "graphics are important" part... A lot depends on what framerates, resolution of the 4 inputs and bandwidth
    – WernerCD
    Commented Nov 21, 2010 at 2:52
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I think you are looking for a video mixer with multiple views. They can be expensive. Here is link to one that supports 3D and can view 10 sources on one monitor http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/sModelDetail?displayTab=O&storeId=11201&catalogId=13051&itemId=452711&catGroupId=37051&surfModel=AG-MX100

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I know that you are looking for a one monitor solution, but it could be that you don't know about a solution like Synergy and think that 4 monitors means 4 keyboards and mice. It doesn't have to be that way. Synergy makes it so that you can use one keyboard and mouse with four different PCs, Macs or Linux desktops in a seamless fashion. The developer has talked about making synergy also have the ability to share one monitor with multiple PCs, but I don't think he is there yet. Anyways, its a potential solution.

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Would this work for you?

http://www.ehow.com/how_6759435_hook-video-inputs-one-monitor.html

I really think what you are looking for is a KVM switch

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    The OP wants to see all four outputs at the same time, so a KVM switch won't work (as is pointed out in the question).
    – ChrisF
    Commented Nov 21, 2010 at 0:09
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I think your best bet would be to have some sort of remote viewing app installed on 3 pcs, and monitor them from the 4th.

I don't think there exists a monitor that takes 4 inputs and combines the image.

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  • I considered remote desktop/vnc but from what ive read the performance might not suffice. I'll be running apps that use 3d graphics so I'm not sure how the frame rate would hold up.
    – Josh Rickard
    Commented Nov 21, 2010 at 1:21
  • Ah. In that case performance using remote desktop or VNC will not be pretty.
    – quickly_now
    Commented Nov 21, 2010 at 1:57
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I came across some software a few years ago that allows different computers (even running different OS) to share a single common keyboard and mouse.

I think this might be it.

Perhaps not exactly what you are after but maybe a step in the right direction.

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  • That won't work for the asker, he is using multiple computers with one monitor, that will only work with one monitor.
    – Wuffers
    Commented Nov 21, 2010 at 0:18
  • Perhaps using that, in combination with a bunch of remote desktop sessions (or VNC).
    – quickly_now
    Commented Nov 21, 2010 at 0:29
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This is not a practical approach and is not buyable. But might give an insight why some of the solutions mentioned in other posts are so expensive.

That said, if you want to combine HDMI video feeds into a single HDMI connection, the device you plug in between needs to terminate the 4 receiving HDMI connections and parse the pixel information and arrange it into a single Video stream. This is a lot of processing, and you need dedicated hardware for that.

One approach that might work is to use an FPGA with the needed amount of HDMI ports. There are IP cores for HDMI of some Vendors like Xilinx which will do most of the work for you. You would need to program logic in a hardware description language to combine multiple of those IP blocks.

FPGAs of this size are expensive, and you might need a license to use the IP blocks. Also, HDMI uses HDCP, which is a content protection system. If you need to play protected content like movies with this solution, that might be difficult.

One solution I found comes from TESmart and might do the trick: https://tesmart.de/products/hdk404-p

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