HAVA vs. Slingbox: Which one is better for you?

	Slingbox AV	Slingbox Pro	HAVA Wireless HD
Built-in WiFi (802.11g)	No	No	Yes
Built-in TV Tuner	No	No	Yes
Time-shifting – Pause, Rewind & Fast Forward TV	No	No	Yes
Record Live TV to PC’s Hard Disk	No	No	Yes
Burn recorded TV programs to DVD	No	No	Yes
Windows Media Center Support	No	No	Yes
Schedule TV program recording	No	No	Yes
Multicasting – Watch TV on multiple PCs simultaneously	No	No	Yes
Remote and Local viewing simultaneously	No	No	Yes
HD device support (without requiring extra cable)	No	No	Yes
MPEG-2 (Full D1) video streaming (local network)	No	No	Yes

HAVA Wireless HD is the premium video streaming and place-shifting product within the HAVA family. Create envy with friends and family as you further extend your home theater by introducing DVD-quality wireless TV around the home on Windows Vista PCs or Windows XP Media Center PCs. Stream live TV programs from your HD set top box, DVD player, or TiVo to multiple PCs simultaneously, allowing you to watch your favorite sporting event on the deck, in the family room, games room, or workshop using your existing 802.11g network. HAVA creates a virtual networked TV Tuner on your PCs so you don’t require TV connections in any of the rooms or on the deck to watch TV. HAVA lets you to access your home theater from anywhere in the world with a broadband Internet connected PC or cell phone. You can pause, rewind, fast forward, or record live TV programs to your PC’s hard disk. HAVA Wireless HD is easy to use with no changes required to your network settings, so setup is a breeze, enabling wireless TV freedom at home or abroad, on a PC or a mobile phone.

Home Viewing Over The Home Wireless Network

• Watch your television programming in DVD quality anywhere in your home, wirelessly.
• Supports multiple users who can simultaneously, but  independently watch, pause, fast forward, rewind or record the same program over the home network  
• Eliminates the installation of TV connections and the expense of set-top boxes in every room.
• Quality of Service algorithm ensures smooth delivery of video and audio to all clients, or any priority client the user may select.
• No changes required to current network settings

Remote Viewing Over The Internet

• Watch your local television programming from anywhere in the world with a broadband Internet connection.
• Use a PC or mobile phone for remote viewing
• Members of the household can watch the same programming in DVD quality on the wireless home network simultaneously.
• Out-of-Sight Remote Control: HAVA provides full control from the PC for virtually any type of A/V device, including PVRs, digital cable boxes, and satellite TV receivers.

Full Windows Vista and Windows XP Media Center Edition compatibility

• HAVA creates a virtual networked TV Tuner for Vista and Windows XP MCE PC’s that provides wireless TV and PVR functionality in any room in the house without requiring a TV connection in rooms where you wish to enjoy your Media Center experience.  
• Use HAVA to stream TV or video content from a Media Center PC wirelessly to an XBox connected TV.
• Play Xbox games in HD while recording the game on your MCE PC simultaneously

Smooth Viewing Experience

HAVA leverages proprietary wireless vBooster technology to deliver an optimal viewing experience.

• Users can watch high quality video (up to 20Mbps full D1 MPEG-2) over their existing 802.11g wireless network on any number of WiFi computers on the network.
• Users can continue to use their wireless network for all the services they are used to (web browsing, e-mail, chats, printing, file transfer, etc), while watching high quality video wirelessly. vBooster, while introducing powerful new functionality, leaves your existing 802.11g network intact. It is fully compatible with the 802.11 standard.
• Automatic adjustment of encoder parameters based on dynamic calculation of the available wireless bandwidth, to ensure smooth delivery of the video stream to all the clients on the network.

Ease of Use and Setup

The automatic device discovery and setup wizard ensures a very positive user experience. The entire setup process (both for wireless home viewing and remote viewing over the internet) is completed over the wireless network, from any client PC by running the setup wizard.

HAVA Wireless HD Specifications

1. A/V capture from built-in TV Tuner or A/V base-band inputs (Composite, S-Video, Component)
2. Built-in hardware MPEG encoder (ViXS Xcode 2105)
   1. MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile
   2. Can encode incoming video stream simultaneously into 2 different output formats. This allows local viewing at home, and remote viewing over the internet, simultaneously.
   3. Dynamic bit rate and frame rate adjustment. This ensures best quality video and audio without hiccup, at all times.
3. TV Tuner
   1. Supports both PAL and NTSC TV standards.
   2. Built-in splitter allows for HAVA to be tuned to a channel independently from the TV set. E.g. one channel can be watched on the TV while another channel is being streamed by HAVA.
4. Base-Band Audio/Video Inputs
   1. RCA Composite Video
   2. S-Video
   3. Component Y-Pb-Pr
   4. RCA Left and Right Audio
5. Pass-through Outputs for every Audio/Video input for connection to TV set or other A/V equipment
6. Networking
   1. Wireless 802.11g interface with 2 external antennas
      1. Joins home wireless network by connecting to existing Access Point
      2. WEP and WPA-PSK Encryption supported
   2. Wired Ethernet (802.3) 10/100 Interface
7. Wireless Configuration
   1. Ethernet cable is not required for first time configuration. Device is configured wirelessly from a PC using supplied Setup Wizard software
8. Front panel LEDs
9. IR Emitter for set-top box control

PC Client

1. Driver on the PC represents the HAVA device as "Virtual" WDM TV Tuner device, fully compatible with Windows Media Center under Windows XP and Windows Vista. This allows you to fully enable the TV Feature of an MCE PC via the home network, without requiring a TV tuner and TV source connection on the PC.
2. Setup for configuring HAVA wirelessly
   1. The Setup Wizard wirelessly locates the HAVA device and automatically connects to it for configuration
   2. The Setup Wizard provides a UI for the user to enter the wireless network settings (SSID and encryption key) so that HAVA can join the home wireless network
   3. Configuration includes selection of the set top box (STB) to ensure successful IR control, and configuration of the unit for remote viewing over the Internet. Remote viewing setup is fully automated and requires one push of a button on the Setup UI (no manual port forwarding or firewall configuration on the router is required in almost all cases).
3. PVR Application
   1. HAVA is compatible and can be used out of the box with Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition, Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate or any other MCE compatible PVR application
   2. Monsoon HAVA PC Client is provided for non-MCE configurations.
4. PC Client Requirements
   1. Operating System: Windows XP (Home, Pro or MCE), Windows Vista (all versions)
   2. System RAM: 256MB
   3. Storage: 512MB
   4. Wireless 802.11g LAN-equipped PC (for wireless mode)
   5. Ethernet equipped PC (for wired mode)

Special Features

All special features listed below are powered by Monsoon's patent-pending VBooster technology. This technology drastically improves the performance of the wireless link between the HAVA video streaming and place-shifting device and PC clients by doubling the bandwidth that is normally available in the typical infrastructure home network configuration. No 802.11 standards are violated or compromised, so the user doesn't have to change network settings on their PC.

1. High quality full D1 MPEG-2 video, regardless of the performance of the existing Access Point
2. Multicast to multiple clients at once (no intrinsic limit on number of clients)
3. Dynamic video quality adjustment based on available wireless bandwidth
4. Internet browsing, e-mail, chat, and access to other standard applications off the home network can be run simultaneously with video streaming from HAVA

At-home Requirements

1. DHCP-enabled wireless 802.11g router/Access Point recommended
2. TV source: antenna, analog cable, digital cable box, satellite receiver or PVR such as TiVo, ReplayTV, DISH, etc.
3. Broadband internet connectivity for remote viewing (recommended 300Kbps upstream)
   
   Download here (HK-icable remote , Cisco version )