REVIEW: OrbLive

OrbLive streams media from your Windows PC to your iPhone or iPod Touch. Its pricier than your average App Store product, but it is one of the most feature-packed, giving you the power to enjoy your PC's music, photos, video and even live TV (if your computer has a TV tuner built in) on the small screen.

Using OrbLive you can access the media on your PC anywhere. I've only tested the app using my own WiFi network so far and I was able to enjoy streaming music from my upstairs study PC to my iPhone 3GS which was docked on the JBL speaker sat in our kitchen. OrbLive claims to stream via 3G on an iPhone too, so if you're on the go and you leave your home PC switched on, you can still enjoy its multimedia delights. I haven't got round to testing this feature yet as 3G coverage is still patchy in my locale, but I will update this review when I do.

Setting up OrbLive is fairly easy but perhaps not for complete technophobes. You'll have to download a free PC app which installs a client on your computer and opens up its ports so it can talk to your iPhone or iPod Touch (it tested fine on both). Then you simply specify the folders and files you want to share. If you have several thousand media files it can take several minutes for those to be catalogued by the OrbLive PC client software. You can choose to have the software launch automatically when your PC starts up, which means you don't have to keep starting it manually.

The results are pretty good. You can tell OrbLive on your iPhone to scale the quality of the streaming media dependent on your signal, lowering the quality if you're on 3G versus WiFi. Audio quality is decent via WiFi and I didn't notice much if any buffering or stuttering even when my WiFi gauge showed just one bar. Video playback was also impressive. As you'd expect, there is a short gap of a few seconds in between playing different music or video files, but nothing to spoil your enjoyment. I experienced a very occasional glitch where a file failed to play and I received a connection error message. Restarting the media file on my iPhone appeared to work most times.

OrbLive claims to play live TV through your PC's TV tuner but as I don't have one, I was unable to test this feature. In any case you can sign up to the paid-for Sky Mobile TV app on your iPhone or iPod Touch, or watch the free-to-view TVCatchup web service, so it's no great loss. You can also access streaming TV services such as ESPN USA, but this is very fiddly to set up and relies on the PC client software. I also found that several of the streaming TV links were out of date and didn't work, for example BBC London and Sky News.

The photo streaming works well and it's nice to be able to quickly access the thousands of photos which are gathering dust on your PC hard drive.

Overall I am impressed with OrbLive and, as far as I could ascertain, it appears to live up to its claims. If you want to access your PC's large collection of music, videos and photos on your iPhone or iPod Touch then this is an excellent way of doing just that.

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REVIEW: Lux DLX

Risk is a board game that I enjoyed as a lad, and Hasbro also made two very good versions for the PC in the 90s. Very recently I discovered that a new version of Risk is being unleashed on Xbox Live which reiginited my interest in the game. So I searched the App Store only to discover that the game had not (yet) made it onto the iPhone or iPod Touch. That initial disappointment quickly evaporated when I discovered something else, Lux DLX, which is a very faithful...er...interpretation of the classic board game. So how does it compare? Read on...

Lux DLX is a turn-based game of global conquest, where the winner is the last man (or woman) standing. You can choose to play against computer AI players or you can play "hot seat" against human players in the same room. Players take it in turn to move pieces across a board representing a map, where each territory is controlled by a player. The more territories you own, the more reinforcements you earn in the next turn. The key to winning the game is picking your battles carefully and mounting attacks where your opponents are weakest, while carefully watching your own back.

The game is intuitive and very easy to pick up and play, taking full advantage of the iPhone and iPod Touch's screen. Simply tap on a territory to select it, tap on a neighbouring territory to attack it and so on. Risk players will instantly feel at home.

Lux DLX boasts over 50 maps, including downloadable content from the game's creator, Sillysoft, and other users. These maps range from the classic world map you'll find in Risk, to historical scampaigns such as The Roman Empire, The Iraq War and the American Civil War, to completely fictional scenarios. The maps I tried were well designed and fun to play. My only minor gripe is that some of the territories can occasionally be a bit small even for your pinkie to tap on, but you can zoom in and out of the board which usually alleviates the problem.

If you're a fan of turn-based strategy or, like me, you yearn for a portable fix of Risk on your iPhone or iPod Touch, then Lux DLX fills the gap nicely until the official game is (hopefully) released. It's extremely addictive and you will soon find that a "quick" game has lasted well into the wee, small hours as you strive for world domination. The presentation is a little rough around the edges here and there but don't let that dissuade you as the longevity of the gameplay easily justifies the low price tag. Highly recommended - and not a single dice in sight!

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