Orb Networks Mobilizes Digital Content Via Streaming

At the DigitalLife 2004 conference in New York City last week, Orb Networks unveiled its first-of-its-kind "personal media portal" service. Simply referred to as Orb on the company’s Web site, the new service "is centered around your home PC," explains Kim Jacobson, Orb’s director of product marketing. Users download software onto their desktop that allows them to access their digital content—including music, movies, and photos—from any device that’s connected to the Internet and equipped with either RealPlayer or Windows Media Player and a Web browser. To view or listen to content from a mobile device, you simply navigate to Orb’s Web site from a PDA, laptop, or cell phone, enter in a password, and you’re ready to start streaming content from your home PC to anywhere in the world. "The problem we’re trying to solve is flexibility and portability," says Jacobson. "You have a mobile life, and you still want to have access to your media."

Solving that problem was the driving force behind Orb’s development. Orb Networks is actually a spin-off of BravoBrava!, an engineering thinktank which "has been developing this particular architecture for three years," says Joe Harris, Orb’s VP of marketing. "It took a lot of time, sweat, and effort to deliver streaming media to any mobile device in the world." Because of the myriad disciplines involved with a project of this sort, "we pulled together a bunch of people from all walks of life," says Harris, "from Cadence Systems, Apple, TiVO, Palm," and many more.

Much of the hard work spent developing Orb focused on automating the delivery process. For example, "when something is requested, we are able to take a look at what’s the format of the file that’s being requested," says Harris. Then, Orb "will transcode it and downsample it until it hits the optimal size and format (Real or Windows Media) for the bandwidth of the target." This is essential for a system that streams content to a variety of devices with a whole range of screen sizes. The transcoding takes place in real time, and Jacobsen claims that streaming content from a PC will only result in roughly a 15% performance drop in that machine, assuming that it’s relatively new and running Windows XP.

In mid-November—when Orb is slated to go live—only Media Center PCs running Windows XP will be able to become a personal media portal. By early 2005, the company plans on offering an XP-only version that can run on non-Media Center PCs. In the meantime, "The Media Center PCs are excellent target platforms for us," says Harris, because of their copious amounts of storage, array of I/O support, and media-oriented mindset.