Orb TV Streams Video To Your TV For $US99

Orb’s first puck streamed music wirelessly a bit more cheaply than competitors. The new Orb TV is $US99, like the Apple TV, but because it pulls media from your computer it can play any video, including Hulu, on your TV.

There are advantages and disadvantages to Orb’s rebroadcasting model. As it’s pulling video from a main machine, you have to have a computer on and running Orb’s Orbcaster software to serve that video up. Orbcaster doesn’t have any playback controls, so, as with the MP-1, all controls are left to the Orb Controller app, which is slick and functional but currently only available for iOS. And the Orb TV doesn’t do HD – it connects to your TV via supplied component cables.

But for those limitations, there are some freedoms Orb TV affords. It’ll playback pretty much any video stored locally on your machine, converting them on the fly where necessary, and can yank down streaming video scattered across the web on Netflix, Hulu, TV networks’ sites and the rest. The Orb TV is shipping now for $US99. [Orb]