The stormy winter weather in the US has delayed the delivery of the webcams. Thus few people have been able to make test calls to confirm connectivity to the LifeSize bridge. As a result we have decided to postpone the…
Today is the final day for registration for next weeks VUC call with LifeSize. You have until 5pm CST this afternoon (Jan 28th) to visit /voip-register and get your details entered to win one of the Logitech C910 HD webcams.…
Following our first video conference call with Blink Mind last August we’re at long last scheduled to do next call in the series. The VUC call on February 4, 2011 will feature LifeSize, the Austin TX based manufacturer of HD video conference systems. LifeSize is a division of Logitech.
Our guest will be Michael Helmbrecht, Vice President of Product Marketing. His responsibilities include product marketing, product life cycle management, public relations and analyst relations. Prior to LifeSize he spent nine years with Dell, Inc. where he was Director of Marketing. Michael held a number of key marketing roles at Dell, most recently leading product line management for data storage and networking in the Americas.
Unlike the earlier video call in August, the Feb 4 call will happen in 720p-based high-definition. A total of sixteen fortunate souls will have seats on the LifeSize video conference bridge.
The output of that bridge will also be streamed via a web feed, and recorded for later download as a video podcast. Audio from the LifeSize conference bridge will be joined to the ZipDX bridge so that people participating audio-only can join the call by their usual means.
As Skype has become more and more popular various other parties have tried to ride on their coat-tails, including old media companies like TV stations & broadcast networks. I know of at least one TV station that was clandestinely using Skype over broadband to “phone in” breaking news events. The station in question even went so far as to promote the fact that they were using Skype. They did so without prior permission from Skype, and were eventually asked to stop doing so by Skype’s lawyers.
TV stations have been doing “Live Remotes” for decades. Most often this involved using a vehicle equipped with microwave relay gear to send the video feed back to the station in real-time. Much effort goes into ensuring that the video signal looks good when it finally hits air. Larger TV stations or more important projects might merit the use of satellite transponder time to get the video feed back to the station via a satellite link, at considerable expense.
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.
This morning I see that BUY.COM has offered the Logitech C510 webcam for $34.99 after a mail-in rebate. Why do you care? Well, if you would like to participate in the second phase of my little VUC experiment with video…