bradKELLETT

Edit: I should mention that I’m not getting a kick-back from Orb or affiliated with them in any way, this is just personal experience.

After we did the video demo of the Sling Media mobile beta running on a Motorola Q for MobileBurn, it got me thinking about place shifting. Things like the SlingBox aren’t available in Australia at the moment, so I didn’t really give it much more thought. Until I was contacted by the PR guy for Orb, that is.

Orb is a free (!) application for Windows boxes that will stream media over the Internet to pretty much any device you can think of. It supports WMV, Real, WinAmp, and 3GP formats, and runs though a personalized web page that works great even on small (read: mobile device) screens.

Having just received the Nokia E61, I thought I would check all this out. I loaded Orb onto my Windows Media Center box, and after a few configuration jitters, I was streaming both live TV and recorded TV to my Nokia. Orb plugs into Media Center perfectly, showing guide listings, program descriptions, everything. It also handles music and photos just as well.

If you are into place shifting, check it out, and kudos to Orb for making such a cool free application.

I have a Windows Media Center Edition PC that I use as my full-time machine, and have a Linksys Media Center Extender out in the lounge room that connects back to my box. It is a beefy PC (dual core 3.0GHz, 1GB RAM etc.) so this doesn’t have much of a performance hit for me when someone is watching TV and I’m trying to work. Overall, I was satisfied with the experience, until I got my Xbox 360.

The Xbox 360 has Media Extender functionality built in, and it absolutely trumps Linksys’ effort. Not only do you get the full MCE experience, including transitions, effects, and sounds, which the Linksys box did not (the interface was the same, but was just static – none of MCE’s niceties), but gone are any stutter problems I was having, and the video quality is much better.

In short, if you are thinking of getting a Media Center Extender and like gaming as well, the Xbox 360 is a great way of doing it.

I would just like to clear something up: I am not a Microsoft hater.

Some people have taken my post about the Xbox 360 looking like a Dell as me just searching for an opportunity for some Microsoft bashing – this is simply not the case. Not only am I a happy Windows XP user for my main desktop, I also have a Windows Media Center in the lounge room that I also love. I keep an open mind to Microsoft products, and even though I took a shot at the 360′s design, I am currently considering buying one regardless.

That is not to say I’m a Microsoft lover either. This site is run on LAMP (Linux with Apache, MySQL, and PHP), I used to work as a Solaris cluster admin, and I use an Apple laptop. I see myself as pretty platform agnostic – each has its own benefits and downfalls.

I probably wouldn’t use *nix as my desktop OS, simply because I live in Photoshop and Dreamweaver due to my job, but if these applications were ported I would certainly give it a try*.

* I am aware of GIMP, but I have too many scripts and actions set up in Photoshop, and don’t have the time to set up the same in GIMP.

While I do like the idea of the new iMac and Front Row software, I wish it was a little more robust. Can anyone tell me if I can watch TV on it? I would love to have this as a full PVR media center, but I doubt that is ever going to happen.