I saw this in the local shops recently

And I thought it was a great idea, essentially it's a video capture/encoder card that you plug an antennae or Astro in, then you run the software provided, open some ports on your router. And technically you will then be able to watch whatever the capture device is seeing anywhere you can get an internet connection.

I found this an interesting concept, but I was thinking, what if I didn't want to watch Live TV but rather whatever media that's on the computer, surely all I need is a software solution. And there IS one such solution on the net right now.

ORB.

Orb is basically a service which you sign up for, then you download their client software and after a few minutes of relatively hassle free setup you will soon be able to watch all the media on your machine anywhere you're connected to the net.

The good news is that... IT WORKS GREAT AS ADVERTISED!! To me my main concern was that I can access videos through either my notebooks or my Windows Mobile 6 phone... and in those regards it JUST WORKS!

The bad news is that I am just a bit worried about the implications of the system. The thing is Orb is a two part system.. the client software installed on your system, and a website at mycast.orb.com.

How you use the system is that you assign a few folders to watch on your host computer, then when you're away from home, you log in to the mycast.orb.com website, browse your shared folders, select the file you want to play and then depending on your firewall setup either the file is directly transcoded by your computer and streamed to the viewing device. Or if your system is behind a firewall the stream is uploaded to the Orb servers and forwarded to the device. (That's based on how they describe their system on their site.)

And that's where my gripe with Orb is, your computer contents are known by their servers, your stream might pass through their servers. It's nice that they use a website to give a nice, friendly interface to the users. But it's not really needed, the same website could have been made to run on the client PC.

But then again I guess they needed SOME WAY to make revenue since the Orb software and service is free to users. So.. the thing works.. but I have my reservations about it.

NOTE : Just found out that this KWorld thing uses a service called Cyberlink Live which seems to work something like Orb.. maybe not as good though.