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Reminds me of Orb, now called Orb Caster - http://www.orb.com. It was pretty awesome to play with and a good combination with a WinTV PVR card, but I never found myself in a situation where I would actually use it. I never really needed most of my media outside of the home. Admittedly, that was before 3G and smartphones became commonplace, but I doubt it would have changed much. At least not for me.

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Agreed. I set up Orb about 5-6 years ago to stream my music and videos, but it was always too much hassle to make sure I left my desktop on (and that it didn't go into sleep mode).

For music, it was more trouble than it was worth - I always had enough to last me on my MP3 player.

For videos, Orb didn't work well on my internet connection (I think 5mbps at the time). Also, I never had a good enough reason to actually stream a personal video, other than to show off the Orb service to someone.

Especially now, with the proliferation of Pandora and Hulu and Netflix and YouTube and other always-on media services, is there really a need for this type of product? I say no.

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