Motocast

Motocast is Motorola's alternative to Slingbox. The difference is that Slingbox uses a signal from a TV or a broadcast. Motocast streams your media, music and video, from a computer connected to the internet and running the motocast software. In a nutshell, Motocast will allow you to browse through the content on an internet connected PC, then stream the content to your motorola device no matter where you are. Both sling box and Motocast allow you to view content whilst out on the move. Services such as tvcatchup have rendered services such as sling box pretty much redundant. Although if you MUST see a TV only event, only available through a subscribed channel. Slingbox is your only option. We tested Motocast earlier this afternoon and over a slow internet connection, with a weak signal, it worked pretty well. With a good signal, it had no problems at all. Obviously using a service like this over 3G is going to incur hefty data charges or use significant portions of your data allowance. It's not perfect, but thats primarily down to the speed and quality of the data connection. We had more success with MP3 streaming than video, but, the interface is clean and easy to navigate (using the Motocast software on a Xoom2) the service on the Mac indexed several thousand audio tracks in a short period of time (I'm still trying to index my google music library) and it worked adequately well. A nearby geek advised that the same results could be achieved via VLC, then proceeded to show how easy it wasn't. Trust me, it's no alternative. For the man on the street, Motocast just works really well and gives Motorola tablet devices a pretty neat USP. Assuming that you have a PC, that you can leave on, at home, all the time, as a media server.

Perhaps cloud services are the future?