Well that would simplify things greatly of course, but then it means bit hit on the bandwidth. I mean, a 720p60Hz stream in 4:2:0 (12 bits per pixel) still amo

Well that would simplify things greatly of course, but then it means bit hit on the bandwidth. I mean, a 720p60Hz stream in 4:2:0 (12 bits per pixel) still amounts to 663Mbits/s. You won't get that out of a gigabit link realistically (at least not over IP). Of course you could use a lightweight compression algorithm, but you'll have to divide this bandwidth by at least 5 to make it manageable for the average home network I'd say (I have absolutely nothing to back that last number, but 100Mbits/s doesn't look too scary...). And that's only for 720p remember. I think if you plan to stream HD video over the network you have to encode and be clever about it.