Recently I’ve been wondering how I could easily get my wall hung tv onto our home network. Since there would be nothing better then watching our photos and videos with others on the big screen.
Having heard that you can do just this, with the X-Box gaming system, we were thinking about purchasing one. However, before we took that plunge I thought I better investigate if it was possible to go the game thing with our current gaming system the Wii.
During my research I ran across The Orb. This is software that you install on one of your computers in your home network. You then configure ORB by telling it which directories have photos, video and other information you want to share. This setup process is painless and quick.
To get this shared data to your TV, you must start your Wii, and download the Opera Internet browser from the Shop channel. Once you have this on your screen you can just web to mycast.orb.com, enter your user id and password to have all your shared data available at your finger tips!
The data streaming is some what dependant on the speed of you computer you have the Orb software running on, but most newer (last 3 years) computers should be able to handle this.
Another really great thing about this, is that you also can browse the Internet using the Wii Opera browser! The only draw back is it comes installed with Flash 7 instead of 9 and there is no way to upgrade the player. So some sites like youtube will work, while others requiring the newer version will not.