Sorry. I said it in an unclear manner. I guess it is because I am not sure if I should use my laptop as the server and some headless device as a client or the other way around. Basically the setup would be that I have only one display but two devices. I would like the controllers (keyboard and a mouse) to be connected to the device that does not have a display (laptop with closed lid). And I would like these controllers to control playback on the other device that is connected to a display (the projector via the AVR).
Basically I am asking the same thing as was asked here: Remote Manage and push content to a Plex Client , so it seems it should work because I would be on a local network, but I am still not sure about the controllers. (I definitely want to avoid using anything touch-screen based, I hate touchscreens).