Sling Box Blog

HAVA Platinum HD TV Device

August 26th, 2009

Manufacturer: Monsoon Multimedia
Customer Rating:
List Price: $149.99
Sale Price: $129.99
Availibility: Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks
Free Shipping Available
Buy Now

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description The Monsoon HAVA Platinum HD lets you extend your home theater experience within your home and beyond! The HAVA accepts an HD video source and streams it throughout your home in DVD-quality video. You can also watch and control programming on any PC or mobile phone with a broadband Internet connection. You can also use your PC as a PVR by recording your favorite programs onto a hard disk for playback at a later time, and you can watch TV from a Media Center PC without a TV tuner installed.

The Monsoon HAVA Platinum HD:

Streams your HD television programming throughout your home network in DVD-quality video.
Automatically adjusts the encoding for smooth video delivery depending on your network bandwidth.
Lets you watch local programming on your cell phone or from anywhere else you have broadband Internet.
Works as a PVR, letting you record, pause, rewind, and fast forward live television.

You'll have control of your A/V components from your computer, complete with customizable virtual remote. View larger.

Connect your A/V sources to the HAVA and stream the content throughout your home. View larger.

Stream Live Programming Around Your House
By connecting your HD video source to the HAVA Platinum HD, you can stream live television to multiple PCs around your house using your home network. You no longer need to worry about TV connections and set-top boxes. Programming comes in at DVD-quality wherever you are in your home, and multiple users around your house can watch/record the same program at the same time thanks to VBooster Multicast technology.

View Television Remotely From Virtually Anywhere
The HAVA Platinum HD allows you to watch your local television programming, or other connected A/V device, from anywhere in the world with a broadband Internet connection. As you are watching, other members of the household can also watch the same programming on the home network. You can even remotely control the settings for virtually any A/V device, including PVRs, satellite TV, and digital cable boxes; a customizable virtual remote will show up on screen allowing for complete control of the device. It's like having a remote control that works everywhere!

Works as a PVR!
The HAVA Platinum HD can also function as a PVR. You can record, pause, fast forward, and rewind live TV right on your computer. Recorded shows are stored on your PC's hard drive. After you've recorded shows, you can burn them onto DVD for archiving or viewing during those instances when you don't have an Internet connection. The HAVA works out of the box with Microsoft MCE, or you can install the included PVR software for non-MCE PCs.

Using the HAVA mobile player software, you can watch television on your cell phone.

Compatible with Windows XP, Vista and Media Center PCs and Notebooks
When you connect HAVA Platinum HD to your network, you are in essence creating a virtual TV tuner for Media Center PCs. This eliminates the need for a separate TV tuner card, and the need for any hard-wired cable connection.

High-Quality Viewing
By employing the standard MPEG-2 format, the HAVA Platinum HD achieves the best possible video quality over a home network. Television programming that is streamed through your home network boasts DVD-quality clarity. The video is also simultaneously encoded with the MPEG-4 standard, which has a higher compression and allows for remote viewing over a broadband Internet connection by a single client.

Thanks to the VBooster technology, all the users on the home network can experience high-quality video. While watching video, users can simultaneously use the Internet for regular uses such as web browsing, email, chatting, printing, transferring files, etc. The encoding is automatically adjusted based on the available bandwidth to ensure steady and smooth video all the time.

The HAVA Platinum HD requires a home network with a 10/100 base-T router with an available Ethernet port, a broadband Internet connection (300Kbps upstream recommended) for remote viewing, and a PC with Windows XP/Vista and a minimum of an Intel Pentium 1.2 GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM for XP and 1GB of RAM for Vista, 75 MB of disk space for the HAVA software, an Ethernet connection, DirectX 9-class video card, and an audio output.

The HAVA Platinum HD is backed by a 1-year warranty.

What's in the Box
HAVA Platinum HD unit, two composite cables, Ethernet cable, power supply, IR blaster cable, two component cables, quick start guide, software CD.

Stream television to computers in your home, or to your cell phone wherever you are.

Product Details

Lets you stream television content via your home network and watch from anywhere with a broadband internet connection
Automatically adjusts video encoding for smooth video, no matter the network activity
Functions as a PVR, letting you record, pause, and rewind live television
Works as a virtual TV Tuner with Windows Media Center PCs
Backed by a 1-year warranty

Video Reviews

No video reviews found for this product.

Customer Reviews

great for watching tv on multiple computers

Review Date: September 12, 2007

Reviewer: James Leivers, New York,NY United States

Great quality it sends tv signal over the internet. So in a house or office environment all the computers in the network can watch the same channel. On the computer you install software that allows you to watch and even record shows. This one is HD and the quality is really good. You can tell it is a mpg though. You'll see occasionally those bits and squares that come with that. Even when you watch full screen it looks great though. The faster the movement the more pixelated it looks especially on the fast moving letters but football looks good and so does tennis. There is at least a 3 second delay to what you are watching so you can't use it to play video games.

Better than Slingbox!

Review Date: May 17, 2008

Reviewer: djk1940, Asheville, NC USA

I have owned a Slingbox PRO for over a year, and was fairly happy with it ... until I got the Hava Platinum HD. Not only does Hava have a better picture than Slingbox, it also has more features, and is less expensive. Those additional features include being able to watch a program over more than one computer at a time, plus a feature that essentially turns your computer into a DVR with DVD copying capability. This DVR capability provides independent control to each computer to pause, stop or fast forward the video...and it gets around the time delay of having to send those type of commands to a DVR cable box using the Hava virtual remote control. Or, you can simply copy the video onto your hard drive, watch it later ... or copy it onto a DVD, making Hava much more versatile than the Slingbox.

Of course Hava does not display a true HD video...HD is converted to a wide screen 480i format, just like that on a commercial DVD, and the resulting video has a quality close to that of a DVD.

I was also impressed by the Hava support. The virtual remote on Slingbox stopped working for all Moxi DVR users when Moxi upgraded their firmware. Slingbox has not been able to upgrade their firmware to fix this problem, while Hava did came up with a software patch that fixed it.

Excellent product

Review Date: October 24, 2009

Reviewer: Mark, New York, NY United States

I am not an expert and I cannot tell if this is real hd or what. However I plugged it in a minute and it worked very well. The definition is very good, so is the sound. I am extremely satisfied.

Stable and reliable

Review Date: November 26, 2009

Reviewer: Michael, Virginia, USA

I use this regularly to access my Comcast DVR on my cell phone (Windows Mobile 6.1) or laptop (Windows Vista SP1). Infrared remote signals are generated from the software interface to control the DVR through an IR "bug" that is pointed towards the DVR. Very nice for transferring content (clips or full programs) first captured on my DVR to my computer. Functionality is stable and reliable, and both the firmware and supporting software are regularly updated by Hava. High quality streaming when accessed from my local network, reduced but acceptable quality when accessed over the internet. Very pleased with the price, performance, and vendor support of this product.

Thinking about a sling? Think again!

Review Date: January 13, 2009

Reviewer: Dustin, Minneapolis, MN

Setup:
Right out of the box, this is a better product than sling box. Let me just say that I have personally used both products on the exact same setup and this one is far superior. Setup was a breeze, I didn't even have to touch my router and everything was up and running very quickly. I plugged it in, my computer found it on the network and a couple minor settings that the wizard guides you through and your done. I didn't even have to configure my router and had no problem connecting from outside the local network.

Performance:
Local performance was excellent. Video quality was great and audio quality was very good as well. Didn't have to adjust anything, worked right out of the box.

Remote video also worked right out of the box. One thing I noticed is the upload speed seems to be capped at about 1 megabit. Now that uploads are getting faster, I don't know why they wouldn't let you go higher. Hopefully this is fixed soon. Picture quality is ok, but not even close to lan. Ease of setup for remote access is very simple.

I noticed the hava to be overall much less laggy then the slingbox. Better video quality hands down and a great interface. One huge upside to the hava is it automatically records to your pc just like a dvr. So even on remote viewing if you rewind something, it is instant since it will be cached. If you have a dvr, the hava is actually recording what comes out of the box, so if you are flipping channels or doing menu commands and rewind something, this will show up. Just keep that in mind.

Pros:
-Easier setup than sling
-Better video quality hands down
-Built in dvr
-Excellent interface
-Very little lag
-Worked great on an older computer
-Windows mobile player is free vs paid with sling if you have a smart phone
-HD looks pretty good on local connection.

Cons:
-Remote access viewing capped around a megabit
-Poor audio quality via remote access (need adjustment setting)
-I got the mobile player working, but much to laggy to watch (HTC Touch Pro/Sprint EVDO)
-Not full hd (says full hd on the box)

Overall I am very happy with it and if you are in the market for one of these devices, get a hava. One thing to note, this box will take in a hd signal which is good because my dvr is an hd box. However while the hd channels look much better in the player it is still not hd. So don't think you are going to be streaming actual hd all over the place. Again, it still looks very good but by no means is it full hd. The player does have a full and widescreen setting which even widescreen looks good on standard channels. Player does an excellent job as displaying video. I'm still giving this 5 stars as setup was a breeze and everything worked right out of the box. Only thing I am a little disappointed with is the audio quality on remote viewing and the bandwidth cap which can be fixed via software/firmware update.

Share and Enjoy:

http://slingboxblog.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/digg_48.png

http://slingboxblog.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/reddit_48.png

http://slingboxblog.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/stumbleupon_48.png

http://slingboxblog.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/delicious_48.png

http://slingboxblog.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/blinklist_48.png

http://slingboxblog.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/blogmarks_48.png

http://slingboxblog.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/furl_48.png

http://slingboxblog.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/newsvine_48.png

http://slingboxblog.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/technorati_48.png

http://slingboxblog.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/facebook_48.png

http://slingboxblog.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/sphinn_48.png

http://slingboxblog.com/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/mixx_48.png