August 7th, 2005
New Software Called “Orb” Is Like a SlingBox Without The Hardware
Billed as “SlingBox” without the box, Orb is a new software solution that allows you to access your stored TV programs and view them remotely on your PC while traveling or at the office, or wherever.
I am not a fan of software only solutions, and in fact have been trying to buy a SlingBox all week (they are sold out in town), but this is an interesting concept I will definitely test. And it’s FREE.
“Orb is a free software-based place-shifting service that lets you access your media from anywhere over the internet. Orb runs on computers with Windows XP or XP Media Center and provides streaming access to the audio and video on the computer. It also can stream live TV if you have a tuner attached to your computer, and it provides TV listings and scheduled recordings.
“Once your computer is set up to stream, you can get your media streamed in WMV, RealVideo or 3GP. That means in addition to watching your videos on your computer, you can also see them on some PDAs and mobile phones. You can also access your photos and mp3s through the service, in case you’re into that sort of thing.” Source: PVR Blog
Lockergnome's Tech News Watch says:
New Software Called Orb Is Like a SlingBox Without The Hardware
Billed as “SlingBox” without the box, Orb is a new software solution that allows you to access your stored TV programs and view them remotely on your PC while traveling or at the office, or wherever. I am not a fan of software only solutions, and in …
August 7th, 2005 at 11:32 pm
Mike says:
Wish it would do a real codec..:( I cant stand WMV - FF and REW is just terrible. RM - well, nothing more needed to say there - you watch it once, normal people dont watch it again..yukky quality in my opinion.
They need to strem xvid or even vcd - svcd woudl be better, but the bandwidth wouldnt be there probably.
Mike
Monday - I am allowed to complain :p
August 8th, 2005 at 3:53 am
Another Mike says:
I know alot of people can’t stand the WMV. Unfortunately there aren’t many other choices. RealMedia(RM) is ok(and I’m just being very polite) is good for very low bandwidth situations. WindowsMedia(WMV) is far better when there is more.
When talking about WindowsMedia you have to be careful of what codec you are referring to. WMV7 is pretty old and is what most people think of when they remember WindowsMedia.
While xvid and other mpeg-4 offshoots are great codecs and offer great quality per bit, it’s not always about the bitrate in video broadcasting. The container(avi) is not up to the challenge of internet. When broadcasting for the net you have to worry about things like lost frames due to timeouts and time sync adjustments. It’s up to the container format in order to make the frames ready to be sent in an orderly fashion(not a timely fashion), and make sure that when a dropped frame occurs don’t wait for a complete one to come by. Just keep going.
A better quality solution would be nullsoft’s container(nsv) and the partner codec VP3 or better yet VP6. Those have awesome quality per bit and can broadcast with very minimal effort.
August 8th, 2005 at 11:28 am
Alice says:
realtechnews
August 8th, 2005 at 11:22 pm