Monsoon HAVA Gold Offers HD Place-Shifting

Monsoons's new HAVA Gold HD lets users stream video anywhere on their home network or from an Internet-connected PC - for just $129.

Monsoon Multimedia is taking aim at the Slingbox and the increasing number of solutions offering to let users stream video around the home and over the Internet with its Monsoon HAVA Gold HD

“The HAVA Gold HD is a great addition to our HAVA line of video time- and place-shifting solutions,” said Vadim Dagman, CTO at Monsoon. “Our engineers worked hard to deliver best-of-breed features including HD support, PVR functionality and Microsoft Vista compatibility at a very compelling price point for existing and potential OEM and retail customers.”

The AVA Gold HD supports both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, and can record content from live TV, DVD players, DVR devices like a TiVo, or a camcorder, and stream it to multiple PCs throughout a home or business networking. Multiple users can connect to the HAVA via broadband Internet and tune into their home television service, complete with channel-changing capabilities.

The HAVA Gold HD features component input (supporting HD video sources up to 1080i) and offers support for Windows Vista and Windows XP Media Center Edition (where it appears as an installed TV Tuner card). The unit streams MPEG-2 video over a local network (at D1 resolution, 720 by 480 pixels) at an average of 8 Mbps, and streams MPEG-4 video to Internet-based users. Users can tap into DVR functionality to scheduled and record programs for later viewing, and recorded video can be archived to DVD.

The HAVA Gold HD is available to consumers through Monsoon’s electronic store at snappymultimedia.com and carries a retail price of $129…although, through January 31, customers can snag a CES promotional pricing of $99.