There's another way to get your television programming over a Net connection, and that approach turns out to be free. An outfit called Orb Networks lets you stream video and audio and photos from your computer over the Internet not just to computers, but also to phones and organizers--as long as they have a Net connection, and as long as they can run Windows Media Player. But for video, you have to have a Media Center PC or one with the right tuner card; otherwise, you can only watch stuff you've downloaded already--definitely a limitation.
Orb's system has different gotchas from the Slingbox. Changing channels or material can be painfully slow, and sometimes it causes software crashes--though Angela was surprised to see the software figure out how to recover from most of them. On the other hand, the video is significantly sharper than that the Slingbox provides, mostly because your computer has a much faster processor--and you can also stream MP3s, Net radio casts, and even slide shows. And, again, it's free.
TV on phones has been making news of late, and the Duo don't leave it out of the mobile-video equation, as U.S. mobile-service providers wait for Americans' usage to catch up with that of consumers in Korea and Japan. Qualcomm and Crown Castle International are competing to put towers around the country so they can beam TV over the air to cell phones. But that system's a year or two in the offing still, and will of course require handsets that don't actually exist yet in the United States. But if you just can't wait, you can get TV on phones right now. The two major services are MobiTV, which is offered with some Sprint and Cingular plans, and V Cast, which is Verizon-only. MobiTV gives you access to two dozen channels of TV, some of them live, like MSNBC, CNBC, C-SPAN, and ABC News Now--and a channel of classic cartoons. V Cast doesn't have live video. It offers mostly video clips from networks you've heard of like E Entertainment Television, CNN, and ESPN. It costs $15 per month and includes e-mail, some Web sites, and the ability to buy games and ring tones and the like. MobiTV costs $10 a month on top of a data plan. But be sure, cautions Angela, that the data service you choose is an unlimited one. As the MobiTV site points out, if you're paying by the megabyte, you could end up with a bill for $10 if you watch for just five minutes.
And the quality? Well, for such a small screen, it's pretty good. The sound is sometimes in sync with the picture. But you can't always read graphics on the screen, and Steve found V Cast to take more than a minute between the time you press the button to request a program and the time the show appears. Also, you'll probably have to get a new phone to take advantage of the service. Some are better at video than others, so before you sign up, get somebody in the phone store to show you exactly how it looks on the phone you're thinking about. And consider getting an extra battery: A steady diet of TV will drain a phone's battery in about two hours--and you certainly don't want to end up in a long airport delay and discover your phone's gone dead because you were busy watching sports highlights.
Ad Choices