Orb 2.0 streams live TV to your iPhone
By Nilay Patel 
posted November 20th 2008 3:14PM
posted November 20th 2008 3:14PM
[Via jkOnTheRun]
posted November 20th 2008 3:14PM
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Suddenly Slings excuses of "It takes too long" "Apple Might not accept it." and "It's just so hard, it makes me have to go poopy." Have no bearing anymore. If a company that basically gives their software out for free can do it, then why can't a company charging $100+ for each box do it?
Personally I watch TV... on my frikkin TV.
you are not watching TV when you are streaming with orb... you are streaming shows that happen to first have been available on the Television... and now are available to other forms of viewing... I bet you do a lot of rollerblading on your rollerblades too... lol (im sure there are a few who will appreciate and understand what im saying)
Access to...
-- Live and Recorded TV
-- My 200+ DVD-quality movies
-- My entire 115+ GB music collection
-- Internet streaming radio
-- Every digital photo I own
-- Two webcams
...all available to me 24/7 from anywhere I have a connection!!! WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE ABOUT THIS APP?!
It's actually the first and only app I've paid for since I bought the iPhone in August... I've been waiting months for this very app! :)
It's an app?! You have to pay $10?! It's free to the rest of the world.
this app rocks, I love it
You can use an add-in and get access to Sirius streams and Howard Stern!!!!
that is well worth the $10
I've been doing this on my crappy palm centro for about a year now. I figured it was already available on the iphone.
No experience with Orb, but I do have a Slingbox, and I paid $15 for the mobile SlingPlayer App on my WinMo machine. Sooooo worth the money. Drains the battery in no time flat, so I have to be using it in my office or the car, but even with those limitations, I love this app. I can watch everything on my DVR, plus OnDemand programming. Hey, it's never going to be like watching a big screen TV, but when all I want is to watch football while my wife is in the supermarket and the kids are asleep in the carseats, its perfect. And nothing keeps the rugrats content while we eat at a restaurant like being able to watch their cartoons. My wife as a first gen iPhone, and we buy programs for them to watch, but how many times can you show them the same eps of Thomas or Sesame Street before they get bored? And if $10 or $15 gets me anything I want to watch on my DVR for free, anytime I have enough juice to power it? I will pay that any day of the week, and twice on (football) Sundays.
...or I could save $10 AND use a phone that can actually send MMS!
I've been using Orb on my WinMo phone for the past year or so and it is quite nice. I can also watch any of my home cable TV channels or Media Center recorded TV on my work PC now that I have a tuner at home. Orb is free on other platforms. I don't know why they charge you iFolks $10 to do what the rest of us have been doing for free.
excuse my naivete, but does a comcast HD DVR contain a tv tuner card? Can I just hook my PC up to the DVR, download ORB and start streaming?
it does but i believe the programs are locked to its hard drive. the tuner card will let you use your pc as a dvr.
It was free when I installed it on my daughters touch last week. It also works on just about any device that has a web browser. I've been using it on my Nokia N800 for the last 2 years and even on my Nokia 6256i cell phone for the last 3 years.
No but you can drop a $20 tv tuner card in your pc and then watch it anywhere with Orb.
I think Oki's talking about a jailbreak 'app' (i think its called voipover3g) that tricks the iphone into thinking the 3g/edge connection is wifi.
So apps like fring and orb etc - that are only meant to work via wifi - now work over 3g/edge.
I guess this will allow downloading larger than 10mb apps via appstore over 3g/edge too.
I used to stream live tv to an HTC 8525 over EDGE and had no problems, so those with a 3G iphone should have a really good experience, granted you have a decent internet connection at home . I have 9mb/s down 500kb/s up and live in an area with good EDGE/3G coverage .
With orb I was able to change channels on my Satellite set top box, watch recorded tv and check in on my webcam monitoring my puppy. I like how orb would detect the available bandwidth each time I logged in from my mobile and adjusted the quality of the stream accordingly.
I've been using Orb since it was in beta 1. I am not an iPhone user, so I was curious if someone could help me out with understanding why there needs to be an application in the first place. You set up the small Orb application on your PC, configure the folders with your audio, video, picture files you want to stream/access (there may be some network tuning needed as well), and then point any web browser to mycast.orb.com. After logging in, you stream away. If you want live TV, just install a TV tuner from the list of Orb supported tuners, configure Orb in order to scan the channels and then select the channel you want to watch from the Orb web interface. It works in Firefox for the PC and Mac, as well as IE on the PC and Safari on the Mac. You CAN also remotely change channels if you connect the TV tuner in the PC to your set top box by using an infrared receiver/transmitter (a USB version, not the 1/8inch stereo plug-type version which I could never get to work). Bingo, now you're able to access all 200+ channels from your PC and/or mobile device. Obviously, the PC needs to be on all of the time.
Still, why the need for an iPhone-specific application? Does it not work on the iPhone browser?
On most devices it is just a web interface that makes it open in a media player. Does the iphone have a media player that can play the normal streams? If not, this may be the reason. Also I've noticed that most things iPhone follow the marketing strategy of charging for convenience. I'm sure plenty of people who have iPhones and buy all the latest apps will have no problem paying $10 for this single app that lets you connect to your computer and stream within the app. I don't know that iPhone is capable of having a browser launch a streaming video player anyway. Aren't they pretty limited when it comes to multitasking?
Could you not stream before? They've had Android support for a while now just using their web interface.
Nice! I wonder how long it will be before someone figures out a way to stream Hulu via Wifi to this viewer (after the requisite Flash for iPhone release of course.)
Anyone want to speculate on a date?
Peter Steinberg
http://www.FlashlightWorthyBooks.com
Recommending books so good, they'll keep you up past your bedtime. ;)
So, question. I have orb on my windows media system. And I did use the jailbroke version, although my phone is now no longer jailbroken. Anyway, when using it I found it very annoying that I couldn't fast forward through commercials on recorded shows, and if I lost the stream it would always make me go back to the beginning, which, when you cannot fast forward or skip ahead very well, made the whole experience frustrating.
Has that gotten any better with this new version?
Thanks for any thoughts.
Just in case nobody knows this but Sling has been trying to release there app in the app store for months now. Apple wont even respond to them or give them a reason why not accepting it. Sounds like Apple will probably deny it write the same app and release it and call it there own like they did with the podcast app or charge a monthly fee for tv. like mobitv.
OrbLive is worth it's price.
For those of you who don't wish to pay, probably you should try OrbLive ( free ) version. It's free and you can download it from Apple's App Store.
$10 Iphone tax sucks...
Own a G1 (Google phone) ?
You can get TV streamed to it for free using Orb.
http://forums.tmonews.com/index.php?topic=5439.0
Gotta love Free. ... free.... free.... free.....
-stile
$10 isn't bad, though who watches live TV these days? Now if I can access my pre-recorded shows sitting on my DVR at home, I'd be impressed!