For those of you who store your music, movies, and all sort of other media at a central location, there may be times when you want to access and play those files from a remote location. While there is this article on how to remotely access your computers, today I present a better solution. This article also relates closely to my work in the Top Ten Programs for Windows Mobile.

What is Winamp Remote?

Winamp Remote is a beta program and service offered by a partnership through Winamp, AOL, and Orb. In a nutshell, Winamp Remote allows you to enjoy your media on your home computer from virtually any location and device that offers Internet connectivity. Winamp has been the developer of the server technology, Orb has provided the Internet application technology, and AOL provides the hosting and bandwidth necessary to run the online software.

Once you install and configure the software—this consists of setting up an account and defining folders you want to include—you can open the address winamp.orb.com in your Wii or cell-phone's Internet browser. Now you can watch or listen to all the media goodness you can handle! Not only that, but you can easily create playlists or share your music with friends. You can rate the music and videos you listen to, or you can start your video in one location and pick up where you left off if you have to go somewhere else or take a break!

Why is it so great?

• Dynamic encoding based on connection speed. It may sound technical, but this is a huge deal-maker for me. For example, I have an HD video stored on my home computer. Obviously transferring that sort of bandwidth over a home-internet connection is not very feasible. So what does Winamp Remote do? It tests the connection between your home computer and the device connecting to it, and it will automatically adjust the quality to accomodate the limited connection speed that you have. Doing this on the fly is amazing, and it means you don't have to convert all your videos into MP4 format for your iPod or whatever.
• As I implied in the earlier paragraph, I really can access this from any device that has an Internet connection and a media player! It plays in all the mainstream formats, including 3GP for your cell phone, Real and WMV formats for PCs, and Flash video for your PS3 or Wii!
• Last but not least, it creates a nice UPnP server for your home network. This allows you to stream this media to your media extender devices, etc.

The last caveat to note here is that the service is still in beta, so reliability issues can occur from time to time.

How do I get it?

You can find a list of instructions here. Enjoy!