Part of the X-Series offer on Three is Orb, the video streaming application that lets you access your media files from practically anywhere that you have a decent internet connection. I’ve never really tried it before, but this seemed the perfect opportunity. With my daily train commute, what could be better than catching up on my recorded TV or watching some of my stored videos without having to encode or sync anything. While I have my new Zune for watching videos, the Media Centre recorded TV converted ZuneTVWatcher is not working for PAL properly yet, so I don’t yet have TV on my Zune.

Setting up Orb is incredibly easy. Download the desktop program, install it, and login with your Orb username and password (or signup for one and then login).

You can configure Orb to access your media files wherever they are stored. I couldn’t add network drives, so I simply mapped the ones I wanted and added the mapped drives to Orb. Worked great

To access the Orb site on your X-Series phone, you need to go to the X-Series page in your Value Packs (on your phone) and click Orb.

I had the best success configuring the bandwidth to 160kb/s. This got me a decent picture and sound, with little buffering. If signal dropped to one bar I would get occasional buffering, which is kind of annoying as it typically takes 5 secs before it gets going again.

Viewing on the Treo isn’t exactly ideal, with its small and low resolution screen, but it works and it is quite comfortable to hold in the hand for an extended period.

It’s pretty good on the HTC Universal’s 3.7″ display though

I’m yet to see what the data use is like, but with 1GB data I think I’ll be right I am also having a similar problem with Orb that I am with ZuneTVWatcher. I can’t watch my recorded TV, so I am wondering if it is a codec issue (although videos play fine on the desktop, weird), but it is still awesome to have access to all of my videos wherever there is a UMTS signal!