Orb, Sky, Three.ie , Help!

john_dooley

Hi,
I have an e65 with Three, on Pay Monthly.
I installed Orb a few weeks ago from Three's site. At the time it was a "Three UK" version of Orb. With that Three UK version of Orb, I was able to tune in to my Sky Box via RF and Channel 68, and stream TV to a PC.
However, I was not able to stream video/TV to my phone.
I figured it was due to one of :
a) Using the Three.Uk version of Orb
b) I was pay monthly but not on X-series Gold at the time

I decided to try again a few days ago.
I upgraded to X-series Gold, and installed the current version of Orb from Three site, which is a Three.IE version
Latest problems are:
1) I can not tune into my Sky Box via RF/CH 68 anymore. The window which allows you add TV channels is actually different than the window provided by the Three.UK version. It doesn't find any TV signal at Channel 68.
2) I still cant stream video to my phone

Any help / suggestions?

Bluefrog

I know when I was playing round with connecting to my Slingbox that I considered the RF connection option and discovered that I can change the default channel from 68 to anything between 1 and 90 on the Sky box - you do it via the installer menu which you get to by pressing Services, 4, 0, 1, Select.

quintron

Is there a link on threes website to x series applications? Would love to experiment! See if xseries is worth it with my slingbox etc..

jimmycrackcorm

I just use orb with pre-recorded programmes from Media Centre which work fine for a few minutes before buffering fails.

Skype can be downloaded but you must have x-series. Orb will work by going to 3ie.orb.com if you have it installed and an account set up.

There must be very few people using orb on three otherwise they (3) would have fixed it.

robinph

Do you need to use the three branded version of the Orb application on the pc? I just installed the default version a while ago and it works, just about, streaming to another pc or to the phone over wireless but not via the three network itself.

jimmycrackcorm

robinph wrote: »

Do you need to use the three branded version of the Orb application on the pc? I just installed the default version a while ago and it works, just about, streaming to another pc or to the phone over wireless but not via the three network itself.

Standard Orb worked somewhat for a while and then stopped. now you have to have Three orb and X-series to get it working.

robinph

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

Standard Orb worked somewhat for a while and then stopped. now you have to have Three orb and X-series to get it working.

There only seems to be one version of the PC server program available from the Orb website, the one to download via 3ie.orb.com is the same as the regular one as far as I can see. Or are you just on about which website address you have to use to access your own Orb via the browser on the phone?

Bluefrog

The Three Ireland Orb PC client is different from both the standard Orb client and the one for Three UK - I have no idea why.

Haven't played much with the video side of Orb but my music streams fine and short videos are ok too - haven't tried anything longer though.

The Three Slingplayer seems to require a very good 3G signal before it will even locate my slingbox. Haven't watched a full show via it yet mainly cause it looks pretty crappy on my N80 due I guess to the high resolution on the N80.

robinph

I must be clicking the wrong link somewhere along the line then. Does anyone have a direct link to where to download the PC client from for Three as all I'm finding is their standard one from the 3ie.orb.com site?

robinph

Bluefrog wrote: »

Haven't watched a full show via it yet mainly cause it looks pretty crappy on my N80 due I guess to the high resolution on the N80.

Just saw a comment on AllAboutSymbin that Sling have an N95 version in the works so once that comes out your problems of having too many pixels on your screen may be sorted.

Bluefrog

Certainly hope so but I think I read somewhere that the N95 screen resolution is lower than the N80....

I'm finding the 3 client very pernicity about when it will connect and when it won't.

Already well addicted to watching the telly on my laptop though

Bluefrog

http://orb.com/download/en_ie_three/orbsetup.exe is the link I used. This was different to both the UK version which required a phone number to be added during the setup process and the standard Orb client as some of the more advanced configuration options are missing.

I couldn't stream any video until I used the client from the link above.

robinph wrote: »

I must be clicking the wrong link somewhere along the line then. Does anyone have a direct link to where to download the PC client from for Three as all I'm finding is their standard one from the 3ie.orb.com site?

john_dooley

Thanks Bluefrog!.
Video streaming is working for me at last.

I did the following / used the following settings:
- I Downloaded & re-installed Orb from the link provided by Bluefrog (I think however that this is the same version as the default Orb from three.ie/orb. Both are version 2.00.0823 and both have the same window for adding TV channels which differs from the window in the Uk Orb version).
- Logged in to Orb on my PC with my existing login (I had set the login details up previously when i downloaded the three.ie/.orb version). I Tried adding a TV channel and failed.
- Started Orb on my e65
- Set the stream format to "Real Media" in Settings
- The stream speed used was 110 kB/s
- Browsed to some sample videos and started streaming

Now I just need to get the TV part working.
Has anyone managed to interface this particular three.ie Orb client to their Sky box?
If so please tell me how you did it!

jimmycrackcorm

john_dooley wrote: »

Thanks Bluefrog!.
Video streaming is working for me at last.

I did the following / used the following settings:
- I Downloaded & re-installed Orb from the link provided by Bluefrog (I think however that this is the same version as the default Orb from three.ie/orb. Both are version 2.00.0823 and both have the same window for adding TV channels which differs from the window in the Uk Orb version).
- Logged in to Orb on my PC with my existing login (I had set the login details up previously when i downloaded the three.ie/.orb version). I Tried adding a TV channel and failed.
- Started Orb on my e65
- Set the stream format to "Real Media" in Settings
- The stream speed used was 110 kB/s
- Browsed to some sample videos and started streaming

Now I just need to get the TV part working.
Has anyone managed to interface this particular three.ie Orb client to their Sky box?
If so please tell me how you did it!

Yes video streaming certainly works , no question about that except for how long. I start a stream and its fine but any time after a minute and a half it will start to buffer and get stuck. could be then or 4 minutes later but generally a very short period. So I cancel and start again and again it is perfect for a very short period. Over and over and over. So try streaming a full program for a half hour or and hour and let us know if it works because I doubt that a single person in Ireland can stream from orb successfully. Try a recorded movie for example.

With slingbox it is not so bad as it will continue on with the live programme even though you miss a part in between but ORb restarts from the begining unless you manually cancel the stream.

robinph

I was having trouble with Orb yesterday, would be able to connect and see all the mp3's and videos on my machine but on trying to play any of them Real Player would startup and then instantly come up with a disconnected message and not play the stream, streaming would work fine when connected via a wifi network on the E65 though. Called up Three yesterday and although it took a few attempts to get the point across that my Orb client was definately setup correclty as I could stream by other means just not over the 3G network connection he did finally get the point and actually genuinely sounded as if he was passing the issue onto another level of support to look at.

Today the streaming is working perfectly fine with Orb over the 3G connection.

I've not got as far as trying a video stream yet and when the connection might flake out part way through an mp3 stream I have to start from the beggining again but that is more of an issue with the way that Orb works rather than Three's fault. Although it's Three's network dropping the connection that causes the problem, Orb should really be written in such a way that it can deal with dropped connections if they are expecting it to be used over mobile networks.

jimmycrackcorm

robinph wrote: »

I was having trouble with Orb yesterday, would be able to connect and see all the mp3's and videos on my machine but on trying to play any of them Real Player would startup and then instantly come up with a disconnected message and not play the stream, streaming would work fine when connected via a wifi network on the E65 though. Called up Three yesterday and although it took a few attempts to get the point across that my Orb client was definately setup correclty as I could stream by other means just not over the 3G network connection he did finally get the point and actually genuinely sounded as if he was passing the issue onto another level of support to look at.

Today the streaming is working perfectly fine with Orb over the 3G connection.

I've not got as far as trying a video stream yet and when the connection might flake out part way through an mp3 stream I have to start from the beggining again but that is more of an issue with the way that Orb works rather than Three's fault. Although it's Three's network dropping the connection that causes the problem, Orb should really be written in such a way that it can deal with dropped connections if they are expecting it to be used over mobile networks.

I actually find mp3 streams to be fine, I can only surmise that they use lower bandwidth. I aslo notice that cartoon type video like the simpsons and futurama can stream for a much longer period of time than normal tv before buffering so I definitely think that there is something in the way within Threes internal video stream handling. I'm always amazed at how long it takes some web pages to load a couple of 100kb in the city centre but if I start streaming video then it will deliver a good constant stream for a minute at least so I suspect there is some sort of prioritization for video traffic.

john_dooley

An update on the Tv channel tuning/scanning....

I know that TV channel tuning/scanning works in the latest versions of Orb, but I need to have a three.ie version for streaming to my mobile to work

Here's what I've tried:
1) I tried installing the latest Orb version and changed the Registry entries to make it look like a three.ie version
Eg. There are some entries in the Registry that point to mycast.orb.com. I changed them to 3ie.orb.com
RESULT: Getting connection timeout when I tried streaming via my mobile

2) I installed the three.ie version, and then ran the "TVchannelScan.exe" from the latest Orb version
RESULT: This genereated an error when I tried running it. It was a long shot..

The annoying thing is that the three.ie version sort of tunes into RTE1 (the video is snowy but I can hear the adio perfectly )
I was able to stream this continously to my phone for more than on hour over the weekend.
If only I knew how to manually tweak the TV tuning frequencies everything would work perfectly....

Bluefrog

I've heard a snowy RF channel indicates that there is something confilcting with your channel and you should change to another.

http://www.ukfree.tv/helpme.php?faqid=1107051117

Good to hear you got such a long period of uninterupted streaming.

jimmycrackcorm

Whoa stop the horses! Three have fixed something. I was able to watch a complete programe all the way home from the city centre on the bus. There was a split second buffering but it was amazing. If this continues to work then I think the combination of an N95 and Three X-Series is unbeatable.

john_dooley

Hey Bluefrog,
The problem isn't really the channel that the Sky Box is outputting its RF on. Its more that the Orb channel scan isn't working properly.
ie. when you hit the "Start" scan button it doesn't (appear to) lock onto any channel
For example I'm not sure how I even got it to start receiving the snowy RTE1 channel.

My theory is that the scan is "sort of "working, but its not reporting any status. So it may be locking onto channels but its impossible to know until you exit the channel scan and go to mycast.orb.com and try streaming live TV.
Eg. I think if you hit "Next channel" five times, then you end up locking onto Channel 5 which corresponds to the frequency that I receive RTE1 on my TV (I mapped the channel to freq based on info in C:\windows/ehome/MCEencoderoverrides.xml).

In order to test this theory...
I was hoping that I could get the Sky Box to output RF on channel 1, hit "Start/Next channel" once in Orb channel scan, and lock onto CH1.
But the Sky box will only allow me to output RF on channel on Ch21 - CH68 which makes to more difficult to test the theory
Also Orb crashed constantly last night.
Combine this with the lack of responce from Orb support, I'm about to give up on this

john_dooley

Problem solved.
Orb support made the following release for me which successfully tunes/scans the TV channels:
http://corp.orb.com/download/en_ie_three/setup_930.exe

I can tune into both Terrestrial analogue channels or my Sky box on CH22.

I'm now able to receive Live TV on my mobile!
Only issue is, I'm not able to control my Sky Box to change channels in Orb... thats currently only working in the US version of Orb.
Otherwise, it works great

Note: I'm not sure when Orb will make this the default version that you download via the link on three.ie/orb