Monsoon Multimedia, makers of the Hava line of place-shifting set top boxes are taking a break from trying to one-up the Slingbox and trying to take on another big name in the placeshifting world: Orb. The difference is Orb gives away its product for free, which could make tough for Monsoon to grab any market share.

This week Monsoon announced HAVASoft, a video streaming, place and time shifting application for PCs with TV tuner cards. Users will be able to install a client on their PC and stream video to internet connected computers or Windows Mobile phones and PDAs. One thing HAVASoft users will be able to do that Orb users can't is broadcast their live or recorded TV streams to more than one user at a time.

Users will be able to pause, fast forward, rewind, and record live TV over a remote connection. And if you've got a wireless home network the software will let you use a TV tuner in one PC as a networked tuner for use by other Windows Media Center PCs in the house. Here are a few of the highlights:

• Support for Windows XP, Vista, and Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6
• Stream MPEG-2 video over a home network
• Stream MPEG-4 video over the internet

No word on pricing yet, but Monsoon Multimedia says the software will be available "in early 2008."

[via TiVo Lovers]