BigShinyThing

Hot on the heels of Slingmedia’s hardware-based placeshifter comes the release of Orb’s software-only [and free] solution, which allows you to watch placeshifted TV, movies and digital audio and view your photo collection, from pretty much any device anywhere. And it seems to work — MobileCrunch successfully field-tested the service under pretty extreme conditions:

I even managed to watch part of Underworld Revolution from 36,000 feet using Conexion by Boeing on my way back from Korea. When you think about it, that’s pretty amazing, especially since it’s free.

Indeed.

The Economist writes this week about placeshifting TV content — watching it from anywhere — with the help of nifty little devices like Slingbox and TV Brick. The Slingbox sits on top of your television, takes in video feeds from cable or satellite set top boxes, DVD players and PVRs and then re-transmits a video stream via broadband to wherever in the world you are. The receiving device can be a PC, a latop, or even a phone — anything with a screen basically. ‘Placeshifting’ is currently so zeitgeisty it doesn’t have a full wikipedia entry yet (this may well have changed by the time you read this).

Slingbox — which BST wrote about last year — went on sale in the States in July for $249. According to Slingbox co-founder Blake Krikorian, while it took 21 months for TiVo to shift 125,000 units, Slingbox sold that many in six months. Other similiar products include Sony’s LocationFree and Microsoft is developing its own placeshifter but Slingbox looks like the Brand Most Likely To so far. Think of it as TV Martini-style — anytime, anyplace, anywhere.