Stream your own live video to your mobile phone

HAVA is a networked appliance that can encode a video source in real-time and stream it to your mobile phone. For example, you can connect a surveillance camera to the HAVA box and you will be able to watch the surveillance video on your mobile phone, via the HAVA mobile client software. The HAVA mobile client software will connect to the Internet via 3G or Wi-Fi to receive the video stream. The HAVA mobile client supports selected models of Windows Mobile and Nokia Series 60 phones.

I tested a HAVA Titanium HD box that I bought from a local retail store for S$411 (about US$269). I connected the box to a high-definition video source (PS3 with NTSC 720p output, playing a Blu-ray movie), used the simple software wizard to configure the HAVA box for Internet streaming, and I was able to use the HAVA client software on my Nokia N82 to view the video. The picture quality was good, even though my phone was streaming the video via the 3.5G network.

I wasn't so successful using the HAVA client software on the HTC Touch Pro running on Windows Mobile 6 -- the video connection kept dropping after a few seconds.

Note that the HAVA box supports standard-definition video in PAL and NTSC formats, but only high-definition video (720p, 1080i) in NTSC format, not PAL. The HAVA box supports recording video into your PC's hard disk in MPEG-2 format, but I encountered problems when I recorded a video of more than 1 hour long (a portion of the video was missing).

If you're looking for a solution to view surveillance photos on your phone instead of video, try using the D-Link DCS-5220 Internet camera. I used it to send photo snapshots periodically to my Gmail account, which I can access using the Gmail client software for Nokia Series 60 phones. Gmail gives me plenty of e-mail storage, so I can keep several images in my mailbox.