SociableTV for Hava: Sharing your TV with the world

The Slingbox competitor has a clever new feature up its sleeves: A service that'll let you share your live video with up to 10 friends, anywhere.

Slated to go live in the second quarter of '09, SociableTV sounds like a killer app for Hava, a line of place-shifting set-top boxes (check out our review of the Hava Titanium HD Wi-Fi) that compete head-to-head with the widely-admired Slingbox.

Here's how it works: Once you've signed up with SociableTV and associated your Hava box with your account, you'll be able to share your live TV feed with up to 10 pals; you can either just send them links or invite them through Facebook or MySpace. No desktop client is required; all your friends will need is a Flash-enabled Web browser, and you'll be able to chat via a basic text interface.

Pretty cool—and it sounds like a great way to, say, catch an NFL game that's not being broadcast in your area.

Then again, I'm not sure what the NFL—not to mention cable carriers, broadcast networks, and the like—will think of Hava owners sharing their video streams with others.

For its part, Sling Media has a strict policy against Slingbox users sharing (or "hosting") their feeds, as this Newsweek story points out. (Sling has a service called "Clip+Sling" that lets you share short recorded clips via e-mail, but no live video sharing.)

The Monsoon reps I spoke to at CES (Monsoon manufactures the Hava) seem to think that the 10-viewer limit will keep them from getting crushed by the likes of ABC, NBS, CBS, Fox, TWC, the NFL, MLB … and so on. And after all—SociableTV won't let remote viewers record the video they're sharing, and more viewers equals more eyeballs watching advertisements, right?

But it's hard to tell how the big guns will react until SociableTV goes live—and as Monsoon CEO Bill Loesch readily admits, the company is taking a "better to ask forgiveness than permission" approach (smart, if you ask me) to launching the service. Fingers crossed.