Somehow I totally missed a great feature of Orb. We all want a PC based Windows Media Center Extender (Microsoft had a rumored project called Softled that has never seen the light of day). The aim of this program would be to extend the Windows Media Center UI to other Media Center PC's around the home. So that you could watch live or recorded TV on any of your Media Center PCs no mater on which one the content was based on.

Over the weekend I installed the latest version of Orb and in the Orb directory I found Orb.MCL, an MCL file is a entry point file in to Windows Media Center so I double clicked it and Media Center loaded and I was prompted with a Orb login via a Media Center UI  

Once I logged in with my Orb account details I got a nice 10 foot UI version of my Orb account

I could select TV, audio, photos, videos and even documents. I selected Recorded TV and could watch any of my recorded TV programs with a thumbnail view of each video.

After a speed test (to ensue optimum video quality for the available bandwidth) the recorded TV streamed in to Media Center.

What is great about this is that it works regardless of location. So its not only does it work over you LAN, it works over the Internet just as the browser version of Orb works.

So you get the full 10 foot UI over a LAN or the Internet and access to all your content that is on your Media Center PC, the interface is no where near as slick as Windows Media Center but as it's a HTML Media Center application it works on Windows XP Media Center 2005 as well as Vista and requires nothing installing on the remote machine expect for the MCL file.

Picture above: Playing Top Gear at work streamed from my home PC on to my Vista Ultimate Laptop

You can download Orb for free from Orb.Com