A couple of new services are sending video to the iPhone, which has been hampered by a narrow choice of supported video formats. NBC is streaming episodes of 30 Rock and The Office to the iPhone over the WiFi network reports NYT quoting Silicon Alley Insider. Orb has also launched a native client for the iPhone and iPod Touch, letting users stream video from their PC reports The Register. Orbs client works over the 2.75G Edge network.

The important thing is that these methods bypass Apple’s (NSDQ: AAPL) store, which was pointed out by J. B. Perrette, the president of digital distribution for NBC Universal: “One other benefit of streaming is that it can reach users of a device like the iPhone without having to cut deals with the phone’s maker. Web video, he said, “is only using the hardware as an access point to the content.” The same goes for the data channel.

Consumers can remotely pick and choose full-length movies on their phone that they want to start downloading to their home PC while on the go, according to CinemaNow, an online video site, and uVuMobile, a mobile software company. The two companies said the service lets users watch trailers on their phone and pick from a catalog of 10,000 movies that will then be downloaded on your PC. The movies aren’t downloaded to the phone and can not be watched on the phone, which is too bad, although they can be viewed on a handful of devices, including PCs, digital TVs, handheld media players and set-top boxes. The mobile catalog is available via a phone’s WAP browser at mobile.cinemanow.com. [Release]