Placeshifting with Beyond TV and Orb
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 at 11:55 am by Tom
Ever been away on business or on vacation and wanted to access your Beyond TV recordings? How about stream your recordings across the Internet? I know there have been times when I am out of town, and have wanted to see what Jack Bauer did on the previous night’s episode of 24. I know I can always wait until I get back home to Houston, but in today’s world of instant gratification, that is a preposterous thought.
Along Comes Orb
To all of you who can relate to my scenario above– I’d like to introduce you to Orb (http://www.orb.com), a free placeshifting application that allows you to make all of your Beyond TV recordings accessible over the Internet. And best of all, Orb will automatically transcode your Beyond TV recordings to a bitrate that is suitable for your Internet connection! For example, I recorded an episode of South Park at 7 Mbps (Beyond TV’s “Best” MPEG-2 quality) on my Beyond TV box at home the other day. When playing the file back through Orb’s web portal, the video was being transcoded at an average of 350 Kbps. The bitrate would dynamically adjust depending on the connection speed I had at a particular moment.
To make Orb work, you first must download Orb’s application (13.9 MB), and install it on a host PC. During the installation process (detailed below) you will create an Orb account, and then do some configuration telling Orb where your media is stored. Finally, to access your media, simply log into Orb’s website with the account information that you created during installation, and let the streaming begin!
I was telling our designer, Joel, about Orb the other day. Joel had a vacation coming up in Cozumel, Mexico, so he decided to get set up with Orb so he could attempt to stream his video internationally. In Joel’s words:
I went to a wedding recently in Cozumel, Mexico. When I arrived, I had some free time at the hotel I was staying at so I logged on the one of the hotel’s Internet stations.
Once on the web I was curious to find out if the Orb software I installed would continue to work even outside of the country. I simply typed in my password and navigated to where my recorded shows were located on my home computer. I chose “Ugly Betty� and it started to play. I only watched a few minutes of the show, but for a split second, it felt like I was home on my couch, enjoying one of my shows.
Want to try setting up Orb for your own scenario? If so, a detailed setup process can be found below.
Ever been away on business or on vacation and wanted to access your Beyond TV recordings? How about stream your recordings across the Internet? I know there have been times when I am out of town, and have wanted to see what Jack Bauer did on the previous night’s episode of 24. I know I can always wait until I get back home to Houston, but in today’s world of instant gratification, that is a preposterous thought.
Along Comes Orb
To all of you who can relate to my scenario above– I’d like to introduce you to Orb (http://www.orb.com), a free placeshifting application that allows you to make all of your Beyond TV recordings accessible over the Internet. And best of all, Orb will automatically transcode your Beyond TV recordings to a bitrate that is suitable for your Internet connection! For example, I recorded an episode of South Park at 7 Mbps (Beyond TV’s “Best” MPEG-2 quality) on my Beyond TV box at home the other day. When playing the file back through Orb’s web portal, the video was being transcoded at an average of 350 Kbps. The bitrate would dynamically adjust depending on the connection speed I had at a particular moment.
To make Orb work, you first must download Orb’s application (13.9 MB), and install it on a host PC. During the installation process (detailed below) you will create an Orb account, and then do some configuration telling Orb where your media is stored. Finally, to access your media, simply log into Orb’s website with the account information that you created during installation, and let the streaming begin!
I was telling our designer, Joel, about Orb the other day. Joel had a vacation coming up in Cozumel, Mexico, so he decided to get set up with Orb so he could attempt to stream his video internationally. In Joel’s words:
I went to a wedding recently in Cozumel, Mexico. When I arrived, I had some free time at the hotel I was staying at so I logged on the one of the hotel’s Internet stations.
Once on the web I was curious to find out if the Orb software I installed would continue to work even outside of the country. I simply typed in my password and navigated to where my recorded shows were located on my home computer. I chose “Ugly Betty� and it started to play. I only watched a few minutes of the show, but for a split second, it felt like I was home on my couch, enjoying one of my shows.
Want to try setting up Orb for your own scenario? If so, a detailed setup process can be found below.
