A multimedia redirection method comprising receiving, by a server, a hardware decoding capability sent by a client, where the hardware decoding capability is a hardware decoding capability that is in a video hardware acceleration specification and that is converted from a hardware decoding capability of a non-Windows operating system by the client; restoring, by the server, video data to a video code stream of a standard encoding format after receiving the hardware decoding capability; and sending, by the server, the video code stream to the client for decoding and display.