[boead]

Orb turns your PC into a media server accessible anywhere and its free.

I installed Orb 2.0 on my WinXP media PC that’s on 27/7. I access a NAS box where I archive tens of thousands of MP3’s that I ripped, along with photos and video galore. I add the folders I want (local or across my network) to the Orb server application, setup logins for multiple shares and that’s it. Easy as Pie (or is it cake?)

Next download and install the client app for your iPhone or a list of other Smartphones and you can now stream music, video or whatever (even TV) directly to your device via the internet.
You can access your web porthole from any computer, anywhere.
You can also access your media from a Wii, PS3 and XBOX.
The local app lets you choose the on-the-fly recompression for your wireless speed.
Local area networks are auto recognized for faster transfer rates (higher quality).

Sound quality is very good, not lossless or WAV but certainly good quality MP3. Video and images ore ok, not great but again its amazingly convenient and easy. 

I have a 32GB iPod Touch and quite honestly I’m sorry a sprung for the larger 32GB version since I mostly use the Touch on my living room system playing internet radio (Pandora mostly) and now I can easily and wirelessly access my entire music/media collection and play directly from its source.

Enjoy!

http://orb.com/

[jermmd]

That sounds pretty neat. Can you stream movies that you've burned? I have all of my ipod media on a 2 TB external drive. Do I make the whole drive accessable over the internet or do I identify specific files? Also, can other people access your media on their devices? Is there a network security issue with this program?

Thanks,

Joe M.

[Theogenes]

I am definitely not qualified to answer the questions asked above, but I can definitely say Orb os awesome! I've used it on two different Blackberry models and on my laptop, and it's worked wonderfully other tha the occasional hiccup. I will say that I did not need any software whatsoever on the receiving end, just on the computer where my media is located. Everything else goes through the browser and downloads as stream... Hope  this helps!

[boead]

You choose the folders (along with all its subfolders) you want to 'share' and that's its.
Only the iPhone needs an app, apparently Apple's RTSP is broken. You cantstream from a webpage just yet, not without somewhat unusual server settings in regard to bit-packet delivery. BlipTV is the only server I found that allows real time video/audio streaming in a browser onto the iPhone/iPod Touch. The Orb app fixes what apples claims isn't broken.
Yeah, otherwise most devices can just access your shared files from a web-browser login page.

Security risk? I doubt much of one.

What's cool too is you can setup other logins and basically 'share' your content with others. You can also setup public shared folders so anyone can access your media, if you want.

Video quality isn't great. Not surprised considering but audio quality is very good. Again, its MP3 quality - NOT WAV.

But for this type of application, its perfect and basically free.

[dwarfed centipede]

This is an awesome service for free!  You can get a wifi media player that is cheaper than the squeezebox.  My palm tx works great for this, so does my laptop and my phone.  I don't see a downside.  If both devices are on the same network, it will use LAN instead of internet for streaming, so there is no buffering between songs.  I've been using this for a few months now, and don't see any problems.

[frakman1]

I know this is an old thread, but when you had Orb, do you remember if you had the option to download a file from your server instead of streaming it (from a client device) ?