With Orb running up to 5 million users, I wanted to give you an idea of why so many are starting to realize the value in media being served from the cloud, such as Orb does, versus locally stored data. I’ve been an Orb, er, member for a long time, but never quite got it to work. The problem was I was attempting to use AT&T’s EDGE network, which simply isn’t suitable for streaming video content. However, when I got my Nokia N95-3, which supports AT&T’s 3G HSDPA network, I decided to give it another go, and I’m completely floored.
The problem, currently, with locally stored video content, is the need for conversion. An .AVI movie file of say, The Princess Bride, is 713MB. Even if my mobile device was able to play that natively, that’s quite a bit of memory to suck up. So, to play it on my N95, for instance, I would need to convert it using something like Smartmovie or Divx Converter, which shrinks it down to a more manageable 70-80MB, without losing video quality. The problem is that now I have 2 copies of my movie – one for the PC and one for my mobile. I can’t really only convert what I want, when I want it, because that takes time.
This is where services such as Orb really start to shine. I have all of Season 3 of The Office (the U.S. one, sorry Brits). I want the convenience of being able to watch The Office on either my PC, N810 Internet Tablet, or N95, on demand, at any given moment. Even if I’m at home, Orb makes that simple and efficient by converting on the fly.
In fact, I often use Orb to stream video to my N810 while I’m cooking in the kitchen. I have full access to my entire video library, without having to convert anything, or worry about having enough space on my memory card.
The limitations, however, are obviously the internet connection requirement. If I’m disconnected, so is my media. However, as airlines are starting to add WiFi access to their features list, how much longer will there be completely disconnected places?
Are you finding it better to locally store video content on your device, after having converted it, or do you think that soon enough it will all be served from the cloud?
Never liked Orb. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to but it wasn’t quite ‘there’. My mobile connection was fine (3G from 3 UK and price plan allowing 80 hrs use p/m!) but my home broadband speeds weren’t all that great. That was my weakest link – but having said that, Slingplayer on the same connection is awesome (far better picture and sound quality).
I don’t like leaving my PC on if I’m not using it and am away for any length of time. So in that aspect the ‘cloud’ doesn’t cut it. But having my Slingbox, 2 set-top-boxes and a router left on – not a problem. Works great, easy(ish) to set up and rarely ‘falls over’ (my Sky satellite box is the weakest link in this respect, crashing on a regular basis!)
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I’ve found you need a multiple device cloud/hard solution based around Slingboxes. I have two bi-hemispheric Slingboxes — UK and US and use a combination of Applian’s Slingbox recorder At Large Recorder software; Tivo; an SD card; Sprint’s EVDO unlimited data plan; Verizon’s fiber Fios network, BT’s DSL network; a Windows mobile phone with an SD card slot and a laptop. Sounds like a lot but it works. I can watch the LA or London Slingbox live on the phone or laptop; I can view the LA Tivo stream online on the phone or on the laptop and can record and then watch recorded London content offline so I can usually find something to watch — particularly taking into account the time differences, vast swaths of the country without EVDO, planes, rip-off data roaming fees and areas with expensive, slow or non-existent Internet. The only hassle is moving the recorded files onto the SD card, which Orb would partially solve only I’ve been unable to get Orb to stay up for days at a time – it usually goes down when I’m nowhere near to reboot the serving computer — some kind of firewall issue which I’m unable to solve — plus I’ve found a significant degradation in quality when streaming recorded Sling files in asf via Orb. And also I’ve found I need some hard files for when Internet’s not available, too expensive etc. So anyway for now I think you need a combination of hard and soft, online and offline – for global broadcast TV anyway.
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