HAVA Wireless HD Review

Many of us are already familiar with the varied options to stream audio and video across the Internet...
Place-catching is (or, if your reading this review, it should be!) a familiar term. In fact, according to an
Insight Research report, streaming video and music accessed through the Internet and mobile devices
will generate $27 billion in revenue by 2011. Among the hardware units available today that can
perform this function, the most well known are the Sony LocationFree (www.sony.com/locationfree)
units and the ubiquitous SlingBox (www.slingmedia.com). Today, however, we are going to look at the
HAVA
Wireless
HD
(www.myhava.com)
unit
from
Monsoon
Multimedia
(www.monsoonmultimedia.com). Monsoon is claiming that its HAVA device bests Slingbox in other
ways, such as its built-in 802.11a/b/g wireless and the ability to record streams on PCs for later DVD
burning.
While we will go in depth on a number of installation types and features, considering the depth of the
hardware, I will not cover everything. To clarify, I want to review the capabilities of the HAVA unit to
act as a 'virtual' TV tuner card... adding the same capabilities of a TV Tuner card without even opening
up your case! Since Monsoon released the HAVA, they have touted the ability to act this way from
within Microsoft's Media Center; MCE for short. As I cannot say that I use MCE but I do use SageTV
(www.sagetv.com), with Sage's recent update of it flagship to add HAVA compatibility, what a perfect
time!
Lets start with a little background... Who is Monsoon Multimedia? Reading their website, it appears
that the founders of Monsoon had previously been involved with both Dazzle (www.dazzle.com) and
Emuzed (www.emuzed.com); both companies who were among the forefront in video technologies for
the PC. Today, they state that, “Monsoon develops and licenses advanced multimedia products and
technologies for the large and growing digital video market.” Among these technologies is the HAVA
lineup.
Unboxing the unit, we can see a very minimalistic approach to the packaging... no fancy schmancy,
highly colored graphics... just the logo.
Inside we can see that the HAVA comes prepared with a whole slew of connection options as far as the
included ports and cabling goes. However, as I read online, “The web site information is a bit
misleading. It says 'connect up to 3 devices' for HAVA Gold and Platinum HD, up to 4 for Wireless
HD. What this means is that Monsoon supports 4 video input connector types. For the first 3
connections listed there is only one stereo audio input, so practically speaking there is only one
external device that can be connected at a time to HAVA. If you also use the RF input (which combines
audio and video) then you can get two A/V sources into HAVA.”
1.Composite (RCA)
2.S-video (4-pin mini-DIN)
3.Component (3x RCA)
4.RF Input (Coaxial / 'VCR' style) [HAVA Wireless HD ONLY!]
The package that I received is labeled as an assessment demo but it is what everyone should get in a
retail box.
Installing the software portion of the HAVA install adds two distinct software packages to your PC,
although once it is setup, no further use of the PC is required. The first is the HAVA Setup Wizard,
which installs the Video Capture Driver, Video Driver Manager, Network Driver, Network Transport
Service, and Remote Viewing Driver. It weighs in at roughly 82MB. The second install is that of the
HAVA PC Player, which is necessary for viewing the output of the HAVA. It weighs in at almost
67MB... a tad heavy for the player considering there are already much lighter open source players on
the market.
This is the Main Software Install banner page...
This shows the install order of the various drivers needed...
Once you are done installing the necessary software, you can begin to configure the HAVA for use...
fairly simple in all... A nice touch is the auto updating capabilities that are built in. Are you listening
Sage? Just as with Microsoft's Windows OS, Sage needs to add this functionality to their software to
make it much easier for the non-techies among us to keep up to date without going back (and back...
and back...) to their website. OK... enough rambling about Sage... this is about the HAVA. Here is the
auto update screen...although some of the shots show older software, as version 1.7 is now available
and my unit was pre-updated with the most recent software versions..
Once the software install is completed, Here is the Main Screen of the HAVA Setup
Software.
Note to Sage... AutoUpdate is a Good Thing! Can we look at something similar? :-)
As a note for those people who are considering the non-Wireless version(s) of the HAVA,
remember: there is no RF/Coaxial input!
Now that we are done installing and configuring the HAVA Software, we need to test out the HAVA,
to ensure that it is setup correctly. To do so, we simply run the HAVA player, which is installed during
the initial configuration. A nice touch that should be mentioned (and ultimately implemented!) is the
fact that although the HAVA PC Player is necessary right now to actually view the LIVE Stream of the
HAVA, the open source VLC Player is being worked on as an alternative viewer. In fact, any RTSP
viewer should be able to stream files directly. At 67MB, the HAVA Player is larger than necessary and
while it can fit on a USB Drive, there is no currently available 'portable' version... almost a necessity
considering that travelers do not always take their laptops with them.
Enough talk... heres the shots...
Configured as a separate 'Popup',
the remote is very basic... Separate
skins can be configured/installed
to emulate quite a few remotes
such as the TIVO...
From within the PC Player, several setup screens can also be
configured...
For a brief comparison on the quality of the HAVA versus SLINGBOX units, take a gander at the
screen shots located at the following website:
HTTP://www.thecallscreener.com/hava.htm
I am sure that both Monsoon and SlingMedia have made improvements to the quality of the streaming
capabilities of their respective units since those shots were taken, they do give a reference point to the
comparable qualities.
Now that the HAVA unit is installed, we can get down the brass tacks of installing the unit within
SageTV. As of V6.2.3 of SageTV, there is preliminary support for the HAVA lineup and installing the
HAVA is no different than any other Tuner Card that you would normally install... except now, you
don't need to break open the case or worry about how much bandwidth your USB Tuners are taking up!
Both the HAVA Wireless HD and HAVA Platinum HD come with this 'virtual' TV Tuner that
integrates seamlessly with both Microsoft Media Center PCs and SageTV.
For the sake of completion, here are the screen shots of the install... The Original STV (skin...) was
used for this review, although there are several others out there. Personally, I use the SageMC theme,
which most closely resembles the MCE theme. If you have any questions on the installation of tuners in
general within SageTV, consult the SageTV web-forums (forums.sagetv.com/forums/index.php)... it is
a great source of information both from the SageTV team themselves as well as from a multitude of
regulars.
After the install is completed, Sage will see the HAVA device as simply another Tuner to record your
shows with. As of this writing, the HAVA device use from within SageTV is still preliminary... during
use, I received several errors within the SageTV logs, which 'froze' the UI until the HAVA tuner was
fully released. I am sure that the SageTV team will have this sorted out in short order... :-) In addition,
The XP Media Center / SageTV compatibility is only available while connected to the home LAN. In
effect, there is no 'remote' connection to a HAVA device (network encoder)...
In order to keep the HAVA available for one of it's intended purposes and still maintain a modicum of
usefulness within SageTV, you should remember that you will need to set the encoding merit of the
HAVA tuner to a very low priority... this will allow the HAVA tuner to become the last utilized tuner
in your PVR recording schedule. If you fail to do so, you will be unable to access the tuner (or worse,
completely mess up a current recording from within SageTV!) from a remote PC, should SageTV be
accessing the HAVA.
Having said all this about the virtual tuner functions of the HAVA, one of the real benefits of the
device is that of a hardware based streaming solution. Here is a post from the HAVA forums
(www.myhava.com/forum/index.php) that helps to describe the benefits and functions:
Similar to the Slingbox, but instead of being limited to just one PC (as the Slingbox is), the
HAVA is designed as a "multicast" device for viewing on multiple clients throughout the home.
(Sending video to Internet-connected PCs and devices elsewhere on the Net is still restricted to
one client, however.)
This is unique compared to the SLINGBOX... HAVA Engineers are claiming to have up to 10 clients
in a concurrent setting that are viewing HAVA streams while on a local wired network and the same
with wireless networks! They do give the caveat that the network bandwidth is the limiting factor... A
typical wired video consumes between 6-7Mbps.
As far as streaming to the Internet, the restrictions placed on the unit are a bit more severe... As you
may have read above, there is currently a limit placed on the number of Internet based connections –
One. They claim that this is to “discourage people from using HAVA to 'broadcast' content to a bunch
of people who have not paid for the service.” While I can understand the idea, in todays society, a
typical household may have multiple family members wanting to stream. My wife (on her Motorola
Q...) has already requested the use of the HAVA... If I happen to be using it at work (ummm... on my
break of course...), she is out of luck. There is hope however... If you remember the screen shot above
in the Advanced Settings portion the HAVA PC Setup, you can see there are settings for the Max
Clients for both a local and remote basis.
Notice the individual settings for Max local and Max remote clients...
While I previously mentioned the HAVA PC Player and the possible upcoming usage of VLC (RTSP
streams...) as a remote client, Monsoon has recently released a Windows Mobile Player for remote use
of the HAVA. To test this function out, I used a Palm Treo 700wx on the Sprint EV-DO high speed
network. Monsoon has made 4 separate downloads available for WM5 users... There is bound to be a
client for your phone. Here are some screen shots of the actual player:
The main player screen
Version Info...
Menu Selection...
Player Settings...
On screen remote functions...
Full screen Video... Notice the
ArcSoft logo...
Non-Full screen video
Channel Selection... Where are the
Channel Logos... :-)
Device Settings...
More Device Settings...
As you can see, the WM5 Client is very basic... Considering that compared to the Slingbox, the
HAVA's stream is not encrypted (yes... you read that right!), you would think that they would have
focused on allowing other, pre-existing players (Pocket Windows Media, TCPMP, CorePlayer, etc) to
view the stream. The beta release that I used was still using the ArcSoft (www.arcsoft) decoder and
displayed their logo in the upper left hand corner, as shown in the screen shots.
As an adjunct to this, I am sure not allowing third party clients has more to do with 'locating' the correct
server (HAVA device...) than anything else. If you remember from the Remote Access 'Key' selector
screen shot within the HAVA Setup, you have to utilize the HAVA Key to locate your device. At some
point in the future, hopefully, Monsoon should allow direct connections (ala Dynamic DNS or
GoToMyPC...) via port forwarding functions. This would allow a direct connection to the HAVA
device without the need for going through any sort of third party server... then the paranoid users
among us can breath a sigh of relief. In addition, if you notice, there is no support for any sort of proxy
server... Come on Monsoon...
I would like to ask Monsoon to continue to 'flesh out' both the the local and remote clients with a
couple of additional features... one of which can be a HUGE bonus! The HAVA will stream live video
and recordings that it has made (kept in it's recording directory...), but what about streaming other
videos/music? By including the ability to stream locally stored videos and music we can all do away
with our software based packages, such as ORB (www.orb.com).
As for my final thoughts so far... I'm impressed! The ability to add an additional tuner with the PVR of
my choice (SageTV) and have the additional benefits of streaming videos to my remote devices(s), is
quite an accomplishment. The hardware is quite advanced and sets the tone for future user benefits. The
software side, however, is less than stellar. I know that with frequent updates, this will change, but
compared to various other packages out there, the options that are made available to the end user need
to improve. For the intended purpose that I wanted to achieve (additional tuner for use within a SageTV
environment...), it does quite admirably and considering the fact that Monsoon has made no official
announcement as to compatibility with SageTV, the HAVA unit does quite well. Congratulations
should go to the SageTV team for including this feature! As far as the software specifically for the
HAVA, well... time will tell.
Here are some additional thoughts that didn't quite fit in above...
●
Although unit can accept HD 'input', the output is 720 x 480 MPEG-2 (Local Connection) and
320 x 240 MPEG-4 (Remote Connection)...This is a reality, but can be confusing for some.
●
Monsoon has no plans to release a public API/SDK at this time, although they apparently will
release one to OEM vendors... WOW! Considering the potential of this device, I can't believe
this unnecessary move!
●
There is no support for scheduled recording yet, nor is their an EPG of any sort for the
Players...Considering that the HAVA scans for channels, it should have some sort of EPG. If
you notice in my WM5 screen shots, the channels were listed by number and not channel name.
If an EPG were implemented, this could be avoided. Another point to this, is that the Players
scan for channels in dumb mode... the channel numbers that they assign do not match the
actual local channel numbers.
●
At this moment in time there can only be one HAVA on a given network...
●
HAVA does not support closed captioning at this time.
I would like to thank Anders Steele and Erin Wiley of FortyThree PR (HTTP://fortythreepr.com) for
providing me with the opportunity to review the HAVA... without their help, nobody would be reading
this!
Jason Meudt