Following hot on the heels of Sling Media’s Slingbox PRO-HD announcement, Monsoon Multimedia is announcing their own HD place-shifting device, the HAVA Wireless with HD. Unlike the Slingbox PRO-HD, which has built-in Ethernet but will utilize the SlingLink Wireless for 11g WiFi, the HAVA will have 802.11n (well ‘Pre-N’ since it isn’t finalized yet) networking built-in. However, it is still limited to Windows-only clients - Windows PCs or Windows Mobile devices, while Sling supports Windows, Windows Mobile, Mac OS, Palm OS, Symbian, and have just announced Blackberry support in the near term. Sling is also working on a client for the iPhone, and, of course, don’t forget the SlingCatcher.

On the other hand, the HAVA’s integration with Windows allows it to be used as a Windows Media Center tuner, just like a tuner installed in the PC only over the network. And HAVA’s PC software allows for recording the streams, something Sling has yet to offer in their official products. (There have been 3rd party solutions for recording Sling streams.)

The HAVA Wireless with HD has a built in NTSC/ATSC tuner (no mention of QAM like the SB PRO-HD) as well as component video input and can stream video up to 1080i. There is no mention of any digital audio input however, so it doesn’t sound like it has the ability to stream 5.1 audio like the PRO-HD.

The HAVA streams using MPEG-2 locally, which probably explains the need for 11n WiFi instead of 11g, while using MPEG-4 for Internet streaming.

It will be available in ‘Spring 2008′, and no pricing has been announced at this time.

The press release:
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