Orb and Kinoma Collaborate on Media Streaming

Orb Networks today announced their collaboration with Kinoma to bring Palm Treo 650 users and Palm OS 5 devices on any mobile network instant enjoyment everywhere of their all their home and Internet television, music, and videos.

Right from the Treo 650's native Blazer Web browser, users will be able to select home or Internet TV, music, or video content of any media format to stream to the Kinoma player. The free Orb application installed on the user's Windows XP PC transcodes the original content's media format when necessary and provides a stream at the appropriate bitrate for the user's mobile data connection.

Treo streaming with kinoma"With worldwide demand exploding for instant, not synced-in-advance, mobile access to TV, music and video from home and on the Internet, the Kinoma Player's upcoming support for RTSP streaming couldn't be more timely," said Ian McCarthy, Vice President of Product Marketing at Orb Networks. "With Orb on their home PCs and the Kinoma Player on their Palm handsets, the millions of Treo 650 users will be able to play any song from their home music collection whenever the mood strikes them or to watch the crucial moment of a FIFA World Cup match wherever they are."

The collaboration with Kinoma enables Orb to extend its industry-leading support for the instant enjoyment everywhere of home and Internet TV, music, and video to the millions of users of Palm Treo 650s.

"Kinoma is pleased to be working together with Orb Networks to allow users of Palm OS 5 connected devices to enjoy their home media while on-the-go," said Mitchell Weinstock, Vice President of Business Development, Kinoma, Inc. "By enhancing the next release of Kinoma Player to be compatible with Orb, Kinoma is again demonstrating its commitment to bringing innovative new digital media capabilities to the Palm OS platform."

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does orb requires your pc to be on?

khm3r_prid3 @ 4/26/2006 11:38:06 PM # Q
does the orb software require your pc to be on while you stream? well i hope it doesnt

RE: does orb requires your PC to be on?
Surur @ 4/27/2006 2:04:45 AM # Q
It does, else you would need to upload all the gigabytes of content you have on your PC to their servers. No going to happen.

Surur

They said I only argued for the sake of arguing, but after an hour I convinced them they were wrong...

RE: does orb requires your pc to be on?
joad @ 4/27/2006 3:21:10 AM # Q
This is a facinating concept. It's also an amazingly absurd idea to actually do.

Let me get this straight: I beef up and support a 24/7 server in order to stream video to my cell phone? I can't think of a thing on TV worth wasting the money or power to support the infrasturcture to do it. MAYBE has application in the Enterprise space for conferencing or reports, but mostly seems about as practical as owning a Hummer.

RE: does orb requires your pc to be on?
Clymmer @ 4/27/2006 1:47:13 PM # Q
It's not as bad as you describe.

I ran orb on my home pc for about about 8 months and it worked pretty well. All I had to do was configure Orb and leave my PC on at home (which it was anyway with my wife and children using it). I mainly used it to pull down pictures to my Tungsten C or any other PC that's connected to the internet.

I wasn't able to get my TV tuner to work with Orb, but that's probably because I didn't try that hard -- I don't really have my PC at home configured to take advantage of the tuner card -- it came with my PC and that's the only reason I have it.

I think I dabbled with getting some video to run, but again, that's not the main reason I was using Orb at the time. With this latest news, I may start it back up again.

I will point out that I uninstalled Orb because the service that ran in the system tray was kind of flaky -- there'd be errors when I'd try to shut down my PC. Nothing major, but rather just an annoyance.

The part that weirded me out minorly was that I had Orb's software running on my PC and trusted that it was sharing only the directories I configured it to share . . . it just seemed like a huge backdoor to my hard drive. I don't have anything to hide there, but it was just a bit creepy to me.

C.

RE: does orb requires your pc to be on?
MarlonK @ 5/2/2006 8:44:41 AM # Q
Yes, ORB works, and requires your PC to be on.

I have been using ORB selectively for some time. I use it to stream local pro sports to my son who is away at college. It is perfect for this. Unlike nationally broadcast TV shows, most football/baseball/hockey games are not broadcast nationally, and who wants to watch a recorded game?

He watches on his computer. Orb adjusts the video quality to match your end-user device, and lets you fine-tune it. While my 3.2GHz desktop machine functions as the "server" for him, it is fairly useless for other apps (beyond IM) - but I don't care since I'm usually watching the same game!

I personally wouldn't want to watch sports on a 2" screen. And I'd rather record broadcast TV and watch it full-size. But I imagine there is a market for people watching Desperate Housewives on their Phone or WiFi Palm, just as iTunes has been successfully selling it. I'm sure Orb has stats on use of the Windows Mobile version they have had for some time.

I had Kinoma on earlier palms and it was an excellent player, with simple desktop tools. Seems like a sensible matchup.

-Marlon

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