Orb, a $9.99 iPhone application that should be familiar to home networking buffs, is available now and will stream music from your home computer, photos, and live television from a TV tuner card – all over the Internet. It can even stream input from a webcam to your phone.

The program, not unlike Slingbox, takes media from your home server and passes it through to the application remotely. This means you can watch TV and movies you have stored at home and even keep an eye on the cat remotely.

Ironically, the app only works with PC-based content and tuner cards. Mac and Linux versions are coming soon.

Apparently you simply drop an SD card into this bugger, press a button, and take pictures. It’s designed to fit almost anywhere — they recommend the eyeball of a mannequin — and records up to six hours of video on a 2GB card. Sadly it lasts only 3 hours on battery but that’s enough to roll it through the bus station for some hot upskirt action. Wait… hot upskirt action at the bus station? $299.95 gets you this ball delivered.

Extra points for watching the entire video without turning down the sound.

Orb has apparently found a way around Apple’s RTSP port cockblockery by streaming your goodies as MP4 files. You’ll also be able to use Orb features with Winamp to "turn your home media player into a very limited kind of on-demand radio station for friends," according to The Register.

If this works well enough, the limitation of the storage space on your iPhone or iPod Touch could turn into less of an issue, since you’d be able to access all of your music and videos from wherever you can get a signal.

Orb opens up iPhone [The Register]

Microsoft LiveStation is kind of a Joost-meets-Orb except that it’s live TV (unlike Joost) only and it requires broadcasters to participate (unlike Orb). The guy in the video refers to LiveStation as “Slingbox without the box.” Sort of, but Slingbox doesn’t require broadcaster participation. He’s dead on about the box, though. Slingbox does have a box, LiveStation does not.

LiveStation’s got a real purtty mouth — programmed using Microsoft’s new Silverlight technology and looking to replicate the real-life experience of flipping through your TV channels. I think that this could be a great service, in theory, if they can talk all the major broadcasters into signing on.

That’s going to be a pretty spicy meatball, though. I’ll be floored if they can get sticklers like Major League Baseball, the NFL, and dinosaurs like NBC to play along. The more progressive hipsters like the NHL and, to some extent, ABC and CBS might be easier to woo. Microsoft does have friends in some pretty high places so maybe they’ll be able to pull it off after all.

If this LiveStation project does come to fruition, guess who’s really going to throw a hissy fit? That’s right, your local cable company (and probably DirecTV). I’ve been wanting to bid adieu to shelling out $100/month for TV for quite some time, but there’s been no viable alternative that works well enough to replace TV.

If I could get most of the same channels that I get through Comcast via LiveStation or a similar service, you’d see me pushing Comcast out the door to endure the walk of shame home wearing my least favorite sweatshirt. You can keep the sweatshirt Comcast. I don’t want it back. Not if it means talking to you ever again.

Of course, the holy grail of TV would be a mixture of Slingbox, Joost, Orb, and LiveStation. Ubiquitous access from any computer or TV set, DVR functionality, and free or low-cost access. I think that Joost will ultimately come closest but the Slingboxes, Orbs, and LiveStations of the world will still fill that need for up-to-the-minute news and live sports. It hasn’t been said that LiveStation won’t offer PVR and time-shifting functionality down the road. If they do, they could have a real winner here.

UPDATE: Apparently, this is not a Microsoft project. London-based Skinkers is developing the service independent of Microsoft after purchasing the rights to a Microsoft Research project. Sorry for the confusion.

Microsoft LiveStation: Slingbox Without the Box [TechCrunch]