It started with an HDMI cable.

The films lived on my laptop. The good screen was the TV. For years the bridge between them was an HDMI cable — carry the laptop over, plug it in, balance it on the sofa arm, turn it into a very expensive remote control that nobody else could use while the film played. Want to pause from the kitchen? Walk back. Want to watch in bed instead? Unplug everything and start again.

Then came the workaround phase every film lover knows: screen-sharing the film over Discord from the laptop, watching along on a tablet in another room. It almost works, which is the worst kind of works. The picture stutters, the quality drops exactly when the scene gets dark, the audio drifts a half-second out — enough lag to remind you, every few minutes, that you’re watching a video of a video.

A film I loved deserved better than 720p through a chat app. And it was already sitting there, perfect, on a machine ten metres away.

Nothing exotic. Watch anywhere in the house, on whatever screen was nearest — TV, tablet, phone, another laptop — from the films I already had. No cable across the living room. No lag. No uploading my library to someone’s cloud, no account, no subscription for the privilege of playing my own files.

lantv is that wish, made ordinary: the laptop keeps the films and serves them over your own Wi-Fi; every other screen opens its browser and watches — full quality, instant seek, no internet involved. The film never leaves your network, which is why there’s no lag to have.

It’s the tool I wanted on all those evenings with the cable. If your house has the same problem, it’s yours too: here’s how it works, and the free week is the honest demo.