automaticable

When I am working away from home, one thing I hate is not having my media accessible to me, especially my music. Over the past few months I have taken the time to test out a few solutions to this problem and have had varying results. Below are the 3 streaming media players I have had the most success with:

Anywhere.FM: Anywhere.FM allows you to upload your music from your home onto a server and then stream that music to any computer with internet access. The interface is clean, fast, and fairly customizable, and uploading your music is a cinch. It takes some time to get started since every song has to be uploaded to a server, but you have the option of uploading your favorite iTunes playlists first so you can get started listening while the rest of your library loads. Once you have music uploaded you can instantly start streaming your music. Anywhere.FM also integrates many social features so you can easily find people with similar music libraries and listen to their streams. This web-app is still in beta, and for good reason. I had a few issues with playback skipping or stopping completely. This is kind of a deal-breaker since I would expect the streaming to be fairly consistent knowing the files are hosted on their own server. All-in-all, not a bad service, especially since it is free (for now).

Jukefly: Similar to Anywhere.FM, this works-anywhere music player is still in beta. The main difference (and it’s a big one) between Jukefly and Anywhere.FM is with Jukefly you do not have to upload your songs to an independent server; they stream directly from your home computer. Obvious downsides to this are that your home computer has to be running the server so you can grab your music from it, and if your network at home goes down you’ve lost access to your files, but it is also nice to have instant access to your music and know that someone somewhere doesn’t have all of your uploaded files on their server. The interface is a bit clunky and loads slow at times, but it looks more polished and has more potential than Anywhere.FM in the long run. A quick and easy install of the Jukefly server will get you up and running in minutes.

Orb: I am fairly new to Orb so my experience is limited, but I’ll give you my opinions so far. Orb is a full-fledged media center that allows you to access not only your music, but also your pictures, movies, and documents from anywhere you have internet access. Orb also integrates with your digital TV tuner, so you can schedule and record live TV and stream those shows as well. Much like Jukefly, you install the Orb server on your home computer which lets you stream your media anywhere else. The interface is very clean and fast, and looks very similar to Windows Media Center (they might be a Microsoft affiliate, I’m not 100% sure though). One of the best features of Orb (and the main reason I installed it) is it integrates seamlessly with your Wii, Xbox 360, or PS3. Since I have a Wii I can comment the best on the integration with that. Orb has its own interface specially built for the Wii, so navigation is simple with the Wiimote. The quality of the streaming music was high and there was little to no wait for the songs to buffer before playing. On the other hand, video on the Wii was terrible. So terrible, in fact, that it is almost useless. Because the Wii has to transcode the video before it is played, it lowers the frame rate of the video significantly. Luckily, playing the streaming video on another PC does not have the same issue. A cool bonus for Orb on the Wii are Wii-specific games. Orb has a ton of flash/java games in its library, most of them are popular browser games already, but it is nice to have additional games that support the functionality of the Wii specifically.

To sum this all up, Anywhere.FM and Jukefly are both decent, but I wouldn’t recommend them as your primary music player until they both get a few more releases published. Orb, on the other hand, seems like a great way to stream your entire media library across the net, as well as add a little more functionality to your video game console.

I’ve only covered 3 streaming media players here, so if you’ve had any experience with anything similar, let me know in the comments. I am always looking for new toys to play with.