[Will]

Remote Desktop is a little different from video streaming or VNC. Video streaming would be taking a fixed framerate capture of the remote screen, and VNC takes a series of screenshots and JPEG compresses them to send over to the viewer (no guarantee of fixed framerate). Remote Desktop, however, sends the actual Windows API messages to the client as well as the base machine. So, it would require a bit more computing power at the receiving end, but would lower bandwidth because all that would be needed to be sent is the theme information at the start (what color are titlebars, etc.), and the information Windows uses to set up a window. The result is instead of sending a picture of a 500x500 empty window that has a titlebar saying "Hello, world!", you send the messages Windows sends to create a 500x500 empty window with the same titlebar. The result is a much snappier response compared to VNC/video streaming for the interface (especially the mouse position), while having similar performance to sending something like a JPEG being displayed. --edit: or playing a movie, or a 3D game... you get the idea.