No-Sp@m Internet!

Installing Orb is certainly a breeze. It went through smoothly without hitch and it was very simple to set up too. You were prompted for a pair of username and password as Orb needs you to log in to their website in order to use this streaming service.

Once installed, there was an icon at the taskbar and you need to right click on it to access “Configuration” option. Next go to “Media” tab where you can select the folders in your computer that you want access too. You can choose as many folders as you can. There are four different boxes here and these are the four different kinds of media access control. Once you have chosen, close the windows and Orb will now “see” only your multimedia files located in the allowed folders.

The next step is to go to this URL via your browser, http://mycast.orb.com, and you will need to login with your username. Make sure that you only see the files you have set to “allow” from the previous step. Play any files you see at mycast.orb.com and if the file is playing, that means Orb is functioning well. Now you just need to set up the wii console.

To do that, Opera browser programmed (Internet Channel) to work in tandem with Nintendo wii has to be purchased with 500 wii points via wii game card or credit card. I’m sure you know how to do that without me having to go into details. It is really straightforward and please note that wii console comes with secure encryption built in so you can have a peace of mind. One thing to note is that, if you were not from United States, you might have problems buying your Internet Channel. To get round this, you can try to set your “Country” as “Brazil” and I did that successfully and I have my Internet Channel installed on my wii after that.

Of course the next step is to access wii console’s newly installed Internet Channel. Congratulations! Now you can surf internet on your plasma /LCD wide screen TV using wii remote! *My TV is still the old reliable CRT though* For me, I surfed to Youtube and watched some videos on the TV screen. The feeling was certainly surreal!

In order to stream your computer multimedia files, click “www” button on the Opera browser and enter, http://mycast.orb.com. * For the first time, your hands might fumble uncontrollably as it was unnatural entering the URL using the wii remote*

Once the page loads up, enter your username and password you created earlier to login. Voila! You have converted your wii console into a home multimedia streaming center!

Points to note:
1. The streaming speed depends on your router speed. *I’d need a better router for better performance I guess*
2. The video quality is not that great. It’s kind of disappointing really. *One way out could be to upgrade your TV to a better one? I’m using CRT so anyone who is using new Plasma or LCD TV may like to share your experience here?* **install ffdshow codec and select it via the “Configuration” tab may improve the vid quality**
3. Your broadband connection speed matters, of course. The higher the merrier.

Overall, I was impressed by the ease of use of Orb, but very disappointed by its video quality. It totally defeats the purpose of streaming video to the TV screen if the quality is that bad. I read up and realised that Orb actually compresses and transcodes the streaming video. I’d love to see the option to disable that in the future versions of the software.

Watch the video:

The selling point of Orb *it’s free download, anyway* is that you can now stream your multimedia files in your home computer to ANY portable computing devices with wi-fi to ANY places in the world. Devices like cellphones, PDAs, PSPs, or notebooks. So you can proudly show your friends on the other side of the world the pictures you’d just taken moments earlier, even though you all may be 3000km apart, and you can skip the step of uploading photos to an online photo sharing website like Flickr.

Note: There are other such streaming software around too apparently. One such is wiideo center. Another good one is TVersity which has good video qualities but let down by the poor ease of use. Both run solely via your home LAN hence you can’t broadcast it to your friends on Mars.