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Mobile Media without Limits |
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| by Darius Wey |
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Do you miss your favorite songs when you leave home? Now you don't have to. Thanks to a free online service and your Windows Mobile powered device, they're available whenever you have a connection to the Internet.
Orb gives you unlimited access to the media stored on your personal computer. It streams digital media on your PC—whether it's a favorite song or a favorite television show—to your smartphone or Pocket PC.
I'm already addicted to Orb. Even though memory cards continue to drop in price, I still can't get one big enough to hold my collection. Even if you have a two-gigabyte memory card packed with music, there's a good chance you have many more gigabytes worth of digital media sitting on your personal computer. That's where Orb comes into play. If you're sitting in an airport lounge halfway across the world and you're itching to listen to one of your favorite tracks at home, you can. As Orb puts it, it's "home entertainment without the home." |
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| Getting Started |
 First, download and install the Orb Media server on your PC. The Orb Media server is the control center of the Orb service, and sits unobtrusively in the system tray on your taskbar. In addition to Windows XP, your PC needs a 2.4Ghz or faster processor, at least 512MB of RAM and a broadband internet connection. If you want to record or stream live television through Orb, you need one of these supported TV tuner cards.
The installation process creates an account for you, if you don't have one already. The account links your mobile device to the media on your PC. You can keep all the media to yourself, or create other accounts on the same computer for your friends and family members. They can personalize the service with their playlists, favorites, and bookmarks. Their preferences won't mess up your account.
To configure Orb Media's start-up options and the media folders you want to share, right-click the Orb icon and select Configuration. In my case, I shared the typical My Music, My Pictures, and My Videos folders, along with a few others located on a secondary hard disk. Every other file and folder is 'private,' making sure I'm the only one who can access it.
You don't need to do anything to configure Orb for your mobile device. It uses a Web interface. There is no client software to install. All you need is a fully-functional Web browser and a media player that supports Windows Media, RealMedia, or 3GP files. It works well with my Pocket PC Phone Edition device with Internet Explorer Mobile and Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, though it should work out-of-the-box with most Windows Mobile powered devices.
To access the Orb service, launch your Web browser on your mobile device and visit http://my.orb.com/. Enter your user name and password, and then hit the Login button. The initial login will take a few seconds as Orb measures your connection speed in order to give you the best quality possible. The faster your wireless connection, the better the sound and video. With slower connections, like GPRS, you may find that you can hear your video, but can't see anything.
Orb's main screen divides your digital media into five key components: TV, Video, Photo, Audio, and Add-Ons. This page is your gateway to your computer's entire digital media collection (or at least, the portion you shared). With all this content at your fingertips, where do you begin? |
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| A Photographer's Dream |
Being an avid digital photographer, I have multiple galleries on my personal computer, each filled with hundreds of photos. No memory card would be able to store that many photos, which is where Orb really opens doors. It doesn't matter where I go, Orb allows me to view my entire photo collection in a manner of seconds.
Orb displays all photos inside the Web browser, both as thumbnails and slides (with support for automatic shuffling). If you have an overwhelming number of photos, you can use the search field and filter them with keywords. You can rotate, annotate or download your images in large groups using the icons located in the top-right corner of the page. If you find image that you particularly like, tag it as a favorite for future reference. You can also share and publish your photos with other people, and even order prints. |
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| All Your Audio and Video |
 If you're like me, your music collection is too large to store locally on your Pocket PC, smartphone, or even your Portable Media Center. Before Orb, I had to make decisions on the type of music that would get me through a typical working day. For example, which tracks do I synchronize with my device? Do I go with the modern rock of Nickelback, or the progressive trance of Armin van Buuren? With Orb, it eventually became a moot point.
Orb can also stream Audible audio books, movie trailers, and content from Internet radio and TV channels. It includes a few pre-selected channels to get you started, but you can always add your own favorites later.
If you have a webcam, you can set it up as a video 'channel' so you can always login to Orb and see what's going on in your own home. Additionally, if your PC has a TV tuner card, you can use Orb on your mobile device to watch live television shows on-demand, or record them for future viewing. In some countries, you can even access an electronic program guide. You will need a dual TV tuner or two single TV tuner cards if you plan to watch one channel while recording another.
Orb sorts through available audio and video by using media tags, which contain artist, album, genre information, and even album art. You can set Orb to automatically loop or shuffle through tracks, though personalized playlists are also an option. It can read common playlist formats (including M3U, ASX, WAX, and WVX), though you cannot create playlists in Orb. You need your PC to create or modify your playlists.
And a word of warning: Orb decodes all audio and video on the host computer prior to streaming, so you'll need to ensure that your computer has appropriate Orb-compatible codecs installed. However, for common MP3, WMA, and WMV media files, you don't need to worry about this since Windows XP includes the appropriate codecs by default. |
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| The Extras |
In addition to streaming the media on your home computer, Orb also makes it easier to access information. You can get localized weather reports (via AccuWeather), global access to Web site bookmarks and e-mail contacts (with support for multiple Web mail providers), and stock information. You can also download and install additional plug-ins such as V4S, which brings the Skype voicemail service to Orb, and DVR Everywhere, which extends TiVo to any 'connected' device.
With Orb, you are no longer restricted to the files you remembered to take with you or the capacity of your storage card. You have instant access to music to perfectly match your mood—even if your mood changed dramatically since the last time you synced your device. |
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