Access your media files anywhere with Orb

Posted by techhackz-admin Saturday, November 21, 2009

I discovered Orb a few months and I never really got a chance to play with it prior to this week. What an app! I love it, it is very easy to setup and you can play any videos, mp3 while being on a data connection.
Orb lets you share the media stored on your computer with several other components: phones, Xbox, Wii, Playstation 3 etc. They call the concept MyCasting basically Orb can stream any multimedia file stored on your computer to any device connected to the Internet. You can also do some of it with TVersity but Orb is easier to setup and works the first time!

Requirements:

- Orb 2.0 (http://www.orb.com/ - free download)
- a cell phone (it should work on any of them: iPhone, Windows Mobile, Android etc.)

I used Orb 2.51.0032, Windows Mobile 6.5 build 23502 and Windows 7 for this article.

Orb Install

You can download Orb 2.0 from http://www.orb.com/, as usual save the file on your computer and run the installer.
Click Next on the first screen then click on I Agree in the second window.

Click on Install to start the install, wait a few seconds and you should be all set.

Click on Finish to close the installer.

Adding Your Files to the Orb database

Now that Orb is installed it is time to add the media you want to share to its internal database.
Go to the Orb Control Panel and click on Media Sources:

Using the Simple tab, click on the + button and select the directory you would like to add to Orb.

Accessing Your Media Files through a Cell Phone

Open up your web browser and go to http://my.orb.com, enter your username and password and press the Login button to log into the website.

You might see an Orb Config Detection page right after the login page, this is normal just be patient and wait for it to load.
Once the main page is loaded, you can click on any of the TV, Video or Audio link to access your resources. For this post I use the TV button to access the TV tuner of my computer. With Orb you can watch live TV straight from your computer on your cell phone!