Today I’m going to show you a device I’d been planning to review for ages. The HAVA Platinum HD is a remote TV viewing device. You plug it between your cable box, satellite receiver, TiVo or other video source and your TV.

What you see on TV is what you can see anywhere in the world, if you have an Internet connection. Of course, "anywhere in the world" could just as easily be a different room in your own house.

The HAVA Platinum HD comes in a plastic blister packaging, so be sure to have a knife (or chainsaw) handy to get it open.

The unit comes with all the cables you need to connect it to an HD or non-HD source. You get 2 sets of component cables (for in and out), AV cables (in and out), an Ethernet cable and an IR blaster with 2 heads. The cables are fairly decent quality, not gold-plated quality, but certainly sufficient for the average home setup.

The back of the Hava Platinum HD. From left to right: reset button, HD (component) in, AV (composite/audio) in, S-Video in, AUX audio signal, HD out, AV out, S-Video out, Ethernet, IR blaster, power.

Hooking the device up took me no more than 4 or 5 minutes. I unplugged the component signal from my between my TV and my TiVo series 3 and connected the HAVA between them. For component inputs, you use the HD input/output ports and connect the audio signal to the AV ports.

After the video and audio ports were connected, I plugged it into my Ethernet switch, plugged in the IR blaster and finally hooked up the power adapter.

The IR blaster has double sided tape strips, and you’ll want to stick them close to the device you plan to control.

Once everything was connected I moved to the office so I could install the software. I’m a little weird with software, as I rarely use the included CD. I’ll almost always check the manufacturers web site to see if they have a more recent version. In this case, there was indeed a download with a newer release number. The entire HAVA installer download is 58Mb. Currently HAVA only offer a Windows player, software for other platforms is being developed.

The first installation failed quite badly (and locked up my machine). I’m not entirely sure whether that was a problem with their installer, or something on my machine, but after a reboot, the installation went without a problem.

Once the installation has completed, the program will search your network for the HAVA box.

And once it finds one, it’ll ask you a few simple questions to get it up and running (which input you plan to use, what device it needs to control).

During the installation, the program checks whether the firmware in the HAVA device is up to date, and if necessary (like in my case) it will perform an update for you.

Once the program installation is completed, you can open the HAVA PC Player and start watching TV. These are the HAVA PC Player buttons from left to right: record, pause/play, stop, rewind, fast forward, live TV, volume, remote control and recordings.

These buttons clearly show that HAVA has something special hidden under the hood. When you watch something remotely, you have the ability to rewind and pause that live stream. Just like you can use a TiVo at home to control TV, the HAVA software lets you do that right on your PC. You can even record what you are watching, right onto your PC.

I’ve rotated the image of the virtual remote control so it fits here. As you can see, it looks very similar to your normal remote control (or at least similar to mine).

Of course, the most important thing with a remote streaming product like this, is the image quality, and the HAVA did not let me down. Pictures are smooth and even when in full screen mode, pictures look fantastic. What you get (at least on a local PC) is REAL HD. When streaming remotely, the image resolution drops, but is still quite impressive.

A close up screen capture of the video quality. You can clearly see most of the details (including the jet exhaust). Picture quality really is outstanding, even regular programming looks great, but to really get the best out of the device, you’ll want to feed it with an HD signal.

Of course, being able to watch at home isn’t what the device is primarily made for, you’ll want to be able to watch your TV anywhere you are. In my first test I installed the software on my notebook and connected to the Sprint wireless broadband network. The streaming quality was much better than I had expected; even streaming at "just" 465Kb/s I got a clear picture with no "hiccups" or lost frames.

The recording feature is simple; if you want to start recording, simply hit the "record" button. To stop, press it again. Once you have finished recording the show, you can click the recordings dialogue window, and it’ll show everything you have recorded, and even have the option to record them to a CD or DVD!

This feature has tremendous potential if you travel; lets say "the game" is on, all you have to do is open the HAVA PC player software, pick the correct channel, start the stream and hit record. Then when you are on your flight, you can open the software and start watching that recording.

The HAVA Platinum HD has one other very cool feature; it can stream to more than one device at a time! There is one big limitation with this though; only one of those devices can be a "remote device". I tried this in my home with 2 PC’s watching something, then connected with my smartphone. The PC’s had a very brief pause, then all three devices were streaming the same show. Pretty cool, and all without any loss of quality on the local PC’s.

This shot shows my own PC and my PDA streaming at the same time off a single HAVA box.

HAVA have released a beta version of their pocket player. It only works on Windows Mobile. Picture quality was surprisingly good but since it is in beta, there is an annoying "ArcSoft" logo in the top right (I’m guessing they provide part of the software for HAVA).

Like on the desktop player, you get a full remote control. There are no recording options. At the moment it is not completely clear when the mobile player will be released, nor has a price been revealed.

Conclusion 

It’s not all perfect; I had some issues with bad picture quality and "ghosting", after a few hours the picture would become quite terrible, but thanks to the support staff in the HAVA forums, I was pointed towards a newer firmware version that has taken care of those issues. I also found the remote to be a little finicky.

Other than those 2 minor issues I have to say I’m extremely impressed. Picture quality is great and the software works as it should. The extra features (recording, time shifting and HD streaming) are impressive, but none of them will really benefit you when you are traveling, as they only work when the device is streaming locally.

The list price of the HAVA Platinum HD is $149, but HAVA currently have a promotion where they’ll take an additional $30 off the price, bringing it down to just $119.99 (with around $10 shipping).

In the next part of this review I’m going to let the HAVA Platinum HD go head to head with the Slingmedia Slingbox SOLO. It’ll be quite the battle.

For more information, or to purchase a HAVA check out the HAVA website.