Vulkano Allows You To Stream LiveTV On Your iPad

Have you been looking for a way to watch TV on your iPad? If you’re making budget plans for this holiday season, perhaps you may want to take a look at the Vulkano product.

Monsoon Multimedia, a leading provider of video convergence products, has announced it’s now taking pre-orders for Vulkano, which should be shipping in early August 2010.

Vulkano is a sleek consumer device that integrates hardware and software with a powerful video processor and local storage. It’s been touted as a next-generation live-TV placeshifting, timeshifting, and streaming device for TV, and mobile devices like your iPad, iPhone, and other smartphones. The upcoming feature-packed Vulkano is supposed to let you record, watch, and control your live TV channels from anywhere in the world.

But, how does it work? Monsoon claims that the Vulkano product is very easy to setup. All you have to do is connect it to your TV and your set-top box’s analog outputs, and you should be able to start streaming live TV from your house to your iPad and other devices over Wi-Fi or 3G using H.264 compression.

Once the product becomes available, you can download the free Vulkano app to your iPad or iPhone, and you’ll be able to watch and control any of your home TV channels through a wired or Wi-Fi connection. According to Monsoon, the 3G app support will be coming later in August.

If you like to record lots of shows, you’ll be able to schedule recordings through an included electronic program guide (EPG) and transfer and watch these recordings at any time on your TV, portable device, or computer. You can also specify your desired DVR format via the Vulkano mobile app or on the Vulkano itself, and your shows will be recorded in that format onto the Vulkano’s flash memory or hard drive.

Get ready to change TV channels from your iPad via the Vulkano’s IR blaster. The product will also support Universal Plug ‘n Play (UPnP) allowing you to stream video and photos from your computers, smartphones, and cameras wirelessly to your TV without having to deal with cables.

Availability: The Vulkano product will start shipping on August 10. Vulkano comes with 8GB, 16GB of SD storage and Vulkano Pro comes with 500GB or 1Terabyte e-SATA hard disk storage. Vulkano will be sold through Monsoon’s website (click here), Amazon.com, leading retailers and through strategic OEMs.

Cost: An 8GB Vulkano will cost $259, the 16GB will cost $279, the 500GB will cost $349 and the 1Terabyte Vulkano will go for $379.

Features Summary

• Mobile Video Recording (MVR): Using Vulkano’s MVR technology, you can schedule and record content from any TV channel on to the Vulkano’s local storage and either on demand or automatically transfer the content to your iPad. A wired, Wi-Fi or 3G connection is required and an included EPG can be used. For example, with your iPad you can schedule a recording before going to sleep and have it automatically downloaded to the iPad.

• Place Shifting Live TV: You can watch and control your home TV or TiVo from anywhere.

• Digital Video Recording (DVR): You can select programs to be recorded to the Vulkano SD card or optional hard drive, which can store over a thousand programs depending on memory size. Once recorded, the programs can be downloaded to your computers, smartphones or played back on your TVs.

• Web Video: Vulkano supports YouTube content (up to 1080p) streaming and progressive downloading for a big screen TV. Future software releases will add support for Netflix, Amazon, Cinema Now and free media content providers. Yahoo! Widgets is targeted for later this year. A web browser with media extensions (including HTML5 media support) will be released later this year.