Ahead of Monsoon Multimedia actually shipping the Vulkano “God Box” later this month, their iPhone/iPad client has landed in Apple’s app storefront. Vulkano is the successor to Monsoon’s Slingbox-esque HAVA, and I suspect the new Vulkano Mobile app (v1.2.101) is an enhanced version of HAVA Mobile (v1.1.28) to now support the iPad and iOS4.
While I don’t yet have a Vulkano in my possession, I do have access to a pair of remote units (connected to DISH ViP 211 satellite receivers) for the purposes of testing the iPhone software. Once locked onto a television channel, video quality looked very good… And I enjoyed some arena football from the NFL Network last night, despite a max app resolution of 320×240 (equivalent to Sling’s current solution). However, initial buffering and issuing remote commands seemed quite slow. I had intended to do something of a quantitative comparison between Vulkano Mobile and SlingPlayer Mobile, but my Slingbox was unavailable.
The opaque remote control UI takes over a large chunk of the screen when triggered, which makes navigating the set-top box’s guide a bitch. However, Monsoon provides their own EPG which can be very quickly navigated. Not only can you trigger a channel change, you can also schedule a recording… not to your DVR, but to the Vulkano’s storage device! These recordings can later be transferred to the iPhone for offline viewing (or streamed around the house?). Once I get my hands on Vulkano hardware, I’ll dig deeper into all the new functionality.
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