Video

Telepresence In The Home: Who’s On First?

Cisco today introduced umi, it’s effort to bring telepresence from the board room into the living rooms of the world. Umi (pronounced like “you me”) attaches to an existing HDTV via an HDMI connection and is said to support HD video calling.

Depending upon your available bandwidth umi can provide 720p or 1080i video streams. They quote 720p as requiring 1.5 mbps in each direction, while 1080 requires 3.5 mbps. Those numbers suggest the umi is not supporting the H.264 High Profile compression profile that Polycom has used on their systems. H.264 High Profile makes more efficient use of bandwidth, according to Polycom it’s bandwidth requirements are as little as half that of competitive systems.

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VUC Video Calls: A Two Act Play

As many of you may know I’ve been trying to put together a video call for the VUC over the past few months. After a lot of thought, but little action, act one of this little project will get underway this coming Friday, August 13th at 1pm EDT.

The basic idea for the project has been with me for a year, ever since I trialed the Polycom VVX-1500 video phones last summer. It evolved as I was later asked to research video conferencing systems for my employer, a project which was eventually tabled in Q4/09.

There are quite a number of factors to consider when you’re thinking about implementing a video conference solution. At its most basic I needed in some substantive way to grasp the difference between one-to-one video calling using desk phone, traditional video conferencing and “Telepresence.”

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VUC Aug 13th: Blink Mind On Video Calling

This coming Friday, August 13th will be yet another Voip Users Conference double-header. Starting at our usual 12 Noon EDT we have an overview of the Freetalk Connect SMB PBX featuring Skype integration.

Then immediately following, at 1pm EDT, we have Chris Veazey, VP Engineering of Blink Mind, to discuss the current state of the industry with regard to multi-media phones and SIP-based video calling.

Blink Mind has agreed to provide a video conference bridge (MCU) as part of their appearance. Further, as Blink Mind are a Polycom partner, Polycom has graciously provided a pair of Polycom VVX-1500 Business Media Phones on loan. One VVX is at Randy’s location in California, and the other in my home office.

As we aim to explore the capabilities of the VVX-1500 and similar desk phones, the video portion of the Blink Mind call with be limited to CIF (352 x 240) resolution using H.264 compression.

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The Freetalk Everyman Webcam For Skype

For the past month or two I have been experimenting with the Freetalk Everyman Webcam for Skype. I must admit that upon hearing about the Freetalk Everyman Webcam for Skype I was a little slow to generate any enthusiasm for the device. After all, it’s just a webcam. I’ve used webcams for a decade or more.

Eventually, I found myself interested in the novelty of the on-board H.264 encoder so I acquired a sample of the little Freetalk Everyman Webcam from In-Store Solutions.

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FaceTime Over 3G….Kinda

iPhone 4 with mocked up image on-screenThis past week I worked a few days with our west coast salesman who is the proud owner of a brand new iPhone 4. A long time user of the iPhone 3 GS, he’s thus far very happy with iPhone 4. Both he and his wife carry new iPhones.

One of the things that they’re been enjoying is the new FaceTime application. While I was there he used it to call his wife who was spending some time with family in Las Vegas.

He also used it to show her how their dog was feeling much better after having been ill for a few days. Clearly, to see the dog wagging his tail for herself is a lot more convincing that merely being told he feels better.

This was for me a revelation. I’ve known this gentleman a long time and know that he is not drawn to techno-gadgetry for its own sake. He’s not an early adopter, but he appreciates stuff that works well. In this regard he’s squarely in Apple’s target market.

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