I have a Dell desktop with Windows Media Center 2005 on it at home. But I live in a residence hall away from home where I can't access certain TV channels that I can get on my cable at home. I've thought about getting one of those Slingboxes, but I was wondering if there is any way I could watch and control TV on Media Center from a remote location, like on my laptop connected to the Internet (similar to how Slingbox works). Would getting Go2MyPC or similar software allow me to do this? Or is there some other option built right in to Media Center or something a little cheaper to be able to do this without pursuing the other options? Thanks.

don't waste your money on Slingbox, your MCE is more powerful!!

ORB & Webguide will allow you to stream TV over the internet. And both are FREEEEEE

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Mike Garcen
TGB Moderator | MissingRemote Editor/Reviewer| Microsoft MVP - Media Center
My MCE Setup

except webguide has been abandoned, and a slingbox works much better than ORB

I know webguide hasn't had an update recently, but has it really been abandoned? It is, afterall, advertised on Microsoft's own site.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/seeit/tvandmovies.mspx

 

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MCE2005 (Reluctantly decided not to upgrade to TV Pack - will see if 7MC fixes the issues) | AMD64X2 3600+ | 1Gb Ram | 3x500Gb SATA | Hauppauge PVR150 | nVidia 7300LE silent GPU | Pig ugly big black case | Virgin Media cable | Xbox 360 wired extender

MS bought out the original creator, and oddly enough, that was pretty much the end of webguide updates, and support

coincidence?  ;)

check it out and if you can get it working great

if not, try ORB (it is free)

then if you're not satisfied check out a slingbox, or a sony Location-free unit

Webguide may not have been updated recently but I have used it pretty consistently for over a year without any problems with MCE 2005. 

Thanks a ton for letting me know about ORB. I installed it and it works great. I wish I would've known about it sooner! I tried WebGuide first but it was kind of confusing to set up and I could never get it to work. I can understand why it has been "abandoned."

odiedude:

Thanks a ton for letting me know about ORB. I installed it and it works great. I wish I would've known about it sooner! I tried WebGuide first but it was kind of confusing to set up and I could never get it to work. I can understand why it has been "abandoned."

I disagree - Webguide is a fantastic product as it also allows you to schedule recordings over the net.  The reason it was discontinued is that it (or its author) was bought out by Microsoft. 

I used to use Orb but I found it rather flaky and at times it would seem to tie up lots of resources on my PC.  Webguide "fits" into MC very well whereas Orb is more of a generic way of streaming media over the net, at least it was when I used it.  I would encourage you to try to get Webguide working as it is invaluable when you realize there is a show starting in a few minutes that you forgot to set to record.

I've never been able to get webguide to stream live tv

i can get it to schedule recordings, or to stream previously recorded stuff, but never live


VLC works much better for that, but then requires a lot more fiddling to get it going