Orb 2.0

Apple TV, Apple TV. All week long everyone has been talking about it. Its funny how you might find other little gems hidden in the shadows of big news. Within all the news I kept reading about Apple's new IPTV format release, there was something that at least one commenter would mention. And thats the Orb software, and how it will stream content from your PC to your Xbox 360, Ps3, or Wii console. Ive tried Orb before a long while ago (when the slingbox was all everyone was talking about) and I thought it was cool, but it was so much of a system hog that I eventually took it off my PC.

 Now version 2.0 is released and have new features and optimizations, a few of which is what I mentioned above about the console connectivity. I don't own a PS3 or Wii (feel free to send me one if so inclined) but I do own an Xbox 360. I also own the original Xbox. I probably shouldn't say this, but my Xbox (1.0) has been my media center for a few years, and it is truly a great little device for that purpose (actually I love using it to stream media to my TV, thats how I watched the Totally Rad Show the other nite). Ive tried connecting my 360 to my PC through Windows Media Center to stream content and it works….I probably would think it was great if I hadn't had any experience with the Xbox Media Center on the original. But it was a little sluggish and didn't support many file formats….mostly WMV…and who uses that?

So I downloaded Orb 2.0 installed it on my PC, set my shared folders and commenced to turning on the 360 to set it up.

Connection was pretty simple, actually all I had to do is go to the media tab on the 360's Dashboard and select video -> computer. Then to my surprise, all the media that was stored on my PC was there in one nice long, unorganized list. Streaming is still a little sluggish. When I start a movie file, it takes about 30 seconds to a minute before it plays. Support for all the file formats were there so I was happy about that. 

One cool thing is you can bookmark some of the internet TV stations in ORB and those stations are made available to the 360.

Orb is cool, works pretty well, but back to Xbox media center I go