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Thank you...

...Mr Hanselman for introducing me to Orb.

Have a PC at home connected to the internet?

Want to listen to all your music anywhere in the world on any internet connected device?
Want to view to all your pictures anywhere in the world on any internet connected device?
Want to view to all your videos anywhere in the world on any internet connected device?
Want to view to all your recorded TV anywhere in the world on any internet connected device?*
Want to view Live TV anywhere in the world on any internet connected device?*

You do? Thought so!

Then install Orb...5 minutes after install and minimal configuration later I connected over GPRS from my C600 smartphone and was watching some recorded TV!

Orb software allows turns your Home PC into a streaming server - if you can get an IP connection to it then you are connected to your media collection - simple!

I'm primarily digging this as I can listen to my music from home without having to mirror it onto my laptop. I think that come the World Cup I might find the live TV stream pretty handy too! You don't need to have Media Centre Edition of XP - Orb will scan your PC's My Documents for music, pictures and images - I'm not sure if you need Media Centre to enable the Live TV feature or whether it will work direct to any TV tuner you have installed. Also you can only have one session active at a time as it "tunes" the stream to the device (PC, smartphone etc) you want the media delivered to.

I agree with Scotts sentiments entirely - pretty poor interface & MSFT needs to incorporate this technology into Vista Media Centre but it does the job of transcoding your media to the appropriate quality for it to play on the device you are using incredibly well.

I'd also like to thank the people behind these products too...you have all changed my "digital" life for the better...
  • Foldershare - for distributing my files painlessly
  • Microsoft - for making the USB Fingerprint reader - a sweet bit of kit
  • Sonorix - for the cool OBH-0110 Bluetooth headphones

People - I salute you!


* If you have a TV card in your PC/MediaCentre

Comments

Anonymous said…
:)
27 Apr 2006, 23:02:00
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