What are the Orb system requirements?

 Operating Systems: Windows XP (incl. MCE 2004/2005) with SP2, or
        Vista^* (any of the 4 flavors) or Windows 7 or Mac OS X Intel 10.5 or later^**.

- There is no Orb version for Linux at this time.

- Windows Server 2003 will work in Orb, but you won’t be able to stream from an MPEG-2 tuner.

- Windows 2000 Pro will work in Orb if you add GDIPlus.DLL in your System32 folder, but you will not be able to stream live TV in Orb.

Internet connection: a broadband Internet connection (cable, DSL, etc.)

Orb recommends at least 256kbps of upload bandwidth. Your home PC / Mac upload speed is particularly important in Orb: at 128kbps, you may experience excessive buffering when streaming video through Orb. Similarly, if you have other applications running on your Orb PC / Mac which use your upload bandwidth (e.g., peer-to-peer apps) at the time you are streaming via Orb, your streaming experience will be adversely affected.

Hardware requirements

Processor: a Pentium IV 2.4Ghz or AMD Athlon 3200+ CPU

Orb turns your home PC / Mac into a personal media server that streams your audio, video, and TV signal (if you have a TV tuner installed on your PC) to any broadband Internet-connected device anywhere, whether it is another PC / Mac, a PDA or a mobile phone. In order to stream any media file format to any media player, on devices with various screen sizes, Orb transcodes your media files on-the-fly to the right format, resolution, and optimal bit rate for your device’s network connection speed at the time you are connected to your Orb PC / Mac.

Therefore, depending on the type of media (MP3, WMV, MPEG-2, etc.) you are streaming in Orb, more or less CPU power – the single most important component of Orb system requirements (beside the broadband connection) – will be required for this transcoding. In short, the more powerful your CPU the better.

Memory: 1GB of RAM, and a few GB of disk space (primarily for your TV or webcam recordings)

What about for the Orb client device?

There is no client version of Orb (except for iPhone/iPod Touch), or setup or configuration of any kind required for your Orb client device (i.e., PDA, phone, etc.). Once Orb is installed on your home PC / Mac, just log on with your client device to your Orb account at mycast.orb.com to start streaming your media from your home PC / Mac.

* At this time, the Orb IR blaster program (for changing local TV channels on a set-top box) does not work on Vista Home Basic and Business editions.

** Currently we do not support Live TV on Mac