Splashtop Remote Desktop for iPad http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/splashtop-remote-desktop-for/... is specifically targeted at the same type of experience. I've used it to play games online, though not very successfully! They don't implement any security last I checked. http://support-remote.splashtop.com/entries/20132542-does-sp...

My iTunes affiliate account lists it as $2.99 instead of the $4.99 in the app store, so I'll drop this here even though it probably won't make a difference due to price change lag: http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=yRSEY6MKcYc&...

Edit: sorry, meant to reply to ComputerGuru http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3701052 -- Splashtop does support sound/streaming video though.

In theory, yes. In practice? Never.

If you stream a 720p YouTube video inside a VM and access it from Chrome or Firefox on a modern PC, you should see near-native quality and framerates. It’s not as fast streaming to an iPad just yet, but you’ll see some impressive changes there before long.

VNC isn't capable of providing a near-native experience for anything because it works from the top-down instead of from the bottom-up. Have you ever tried streaming 720p videos via VNC? The bandwidth it takes is ridiculous, and even on a gigabit LAN it doesn't provide the desired experience, let alone over the internet.

Also, I don't think there's a browser-based VNC implementation that will work on iOS or even Android (I don't mean Java plugins!) so there's that, too.

Video also requires sound, but I also hope that in the future there will be less reasons to even want to do that. Why not just stream that Video to the device then? (I understand there are reasons today like lack of flash on iOS, but it just seems silly.) So really I am depressed by the state of VNC/lack of successors. There is much room for innovation and I just doubt that anything can be solved with a VM. Better solutions in the OS would work in a VM and native. "It's up for disruption", as they say here.

That's because most existing VNC applications aren't designed for that purpose.

There's no reason you couldn't use a proper video compression algorithm in a VNC application where applicable, or just send the whole image as compressed video.