So, out of complete boredom, I decided to try and stream some videos to my Blackberry 8320 that was provided to me by my work.  I manage a Blackberry Enterprise Server Express at work and I have them configured to for data usage, so I can do this without relatively no impact.  Unfortunately, I found that the OS that shipped with our Blackberries (4.2 I think) did not support streaming media, so I was out of luck…until I decided to upgrade it.

I downloaded v4.5 from T-Mobile, which is our carrier, and it took about an hour to go through the install.  I wasn’t expecting that.  Anyway, I first tried TVersity as my streaming media server since it was supposed to support the transcoding of MKV files better, but I repeatedly timed out when trying to stream a file.  So, I figured I would try out the Orb one more time.

I set this up on my VPNSVR since it doesn’t do much except run my WSUS and act as my VPN access point.  It’s not the most powerful system  (E1200 and 2GB DDR2), but it passed Orb’s system requirements.  After configuring a folder for Orb to use and making a few configurations to test with, I accessed mycast.orb.com and logged in from my Blackberry.  I initially browsed to a folder containing a movie in AVI format and hit play.  Success!  I was presented with the Blackberry media player and it started playing 12 Angry Men.  The resolution was extremely small, however, and did not fill my screen, but I was still pretty happy that it even worked.  I don’t have any initial plans for this functionality, but it makes my work phone a whole lot more fun.  I was able to get MKVs to playback, but the video was not viewable.  The audio appeared fine, but it was still unwatchable.  Oh well, I imagine I would only really use this for TV episodes or home videos and I only have a handful of those in MKV format.

So, if you have a fairly new Blackberry, upgrade your OS to 4.3 or later and enjoy streaming media using Orb!