Telepresence Options - Industry News

Theme-park dummy trick becomes teleconference tool

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:24:58 -0500

Video: Humanoid teleconferencing

by Tom Simonite, New Scientist

A theme-park animatronic trick could allow people act more naturally in videoconferences.

Shader lamps is a technique that projects an animated face that looks three-dimensional onto a dummy's blank face. Now the trick has been exploited to project a person's features onto a animatronic double somewhere else.

Before the dummy's blank polystyrene face can be brought to life, the real person has to have still photographs taken from the front and side to create a 3D model of their head. This model allows the output from a single camera to be distorted to make an image that looks right when projected onto the dummy.

The user wears a headband that is tracked by a camera so that the remote dummy can swivel and tilt its head to match their movements. An audio feed with a slight delay built in means that the person's words are synchronised with their movements, and the person being projected can see the scene around their remote double thanks to a panoramic camera in the dummy's head.
Second-class citizen

The video above shows the animatronic shader-lamps avatar demonstrated by a comedian at a recent conference. The system has a number of advantages over conventional screen-based video conferencing, says Greg Welch, the computer scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill leading the project with his colleague Henry Fuchs.

"In existing 2D videoconferencing systems, the remote person is kind of a second-class citizen: they're in this box sitting in one place, they look different," says Welch.

"And then there are technical problems," adds Welch. The camera position in conventional videoconferencing makes it hard for viewers to judge where an on-screen interlocutor is looking, which is particularly problematic, he says: "It often looks like you're not paying attention."

Those problems are minimized in his system, he says, because the remote person's eye and head movements are accurately replayed in real time.
Self-assertion

The most sophisticated commercially available teleconferencing systems can cost upwards of $1 million, says Wijnand IJsselsteijn, a member of a European consortium working on a separate 3D teleconferencing system. "But they still suffer problems in conveying eye contact and gaze direction naturally."

Using projection-augmented dummies is a novel way to address that, he says, and should also make it easier for a person not in the room to have an equal part in a conversation.

"When you're the remote person, it's really hard to get the attention of the room," IJsselsteijn explains. "But when you can move something in that room you have a much more physical presence." Simply turning your head would allow you to assert yourself, because the movement would be mirrored by the avatar, he says. "Irrespective of how realistic it is, that's a new way to gain attention."
Mobile avatar

A range of improvements are planned to the prototype: for example, using multiple projectors to cover the sides as well as the front of the dummy's. A mobile version is also planned: "One of the inspirations for this system was a conversation with a prominent physician who asked if we could make it possible for him to visit remote patients as a tangible avatar," explains Fuchs.

It could also be a boon to patients, he adds. "There are people all over the world who are unable for medical reasons to leave their house," says Fuchs. A mobile version of this system could provide a "prosthetic presence" they could use to venture out and interact with other people, he says.

The animatronic shader-lamps avatar was presented at the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality in Orlando, Florida, last week.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

[via New Scientist]

Sony demos game controller to track motion and emotion

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:11:56 -0500

Video: Hands-free control

By Colin Barras, New Scientist

The latest games console arms race - to perfect hands-free, full-body game control - just got more competitive.

Sony has unveiled just such a system called Interactive Communication Unit or ICU, at the Vision 2009 trade fair in Stuttgart, Germany. It uses stereo cameras to watch a player and, like a pair of eyes, to judge depth.

Microsoft unveiled its own full body controller in the summer summer, Project Natal, due to be released for the Xbox 360 games console late in 2010.

Like Natal, Sony's system tracks a person's whole body without their having to wear the body markers used in motion-capture studios. Also like Natal, Sony says ICU can detect a player's emotions by watching their facial expressions, and can judge sex and approximate age from their appearance.

Full-body tracking

Sony Europe's image-sensing division created ICU in collaboration with Atracsys, a small firm in Lausanne, Switzerland, that specialises in optical tracking.

Atracsys already sells a system that gives medics hands-free control of computers in sterile environments, called Infinitrack. But its users have to wear small reflective markers like those used in a movie industry motion-capture studio; previous versions required users to wear particular colours.

Casual users can't be expected to do that, says Gaëtan Marti, CEO of Atracsys, which limits the system's precision.

Finger signs

"We cannot at present detect 'finger signs' [but] we can detect where you are looking at on the screen - up, middle, down - and the raw position of your arms [or legs]," he says.

ICU's stereo cameras can detect the position of specific points on the arms, legs and head to within 10 cubic centimetres, compared with the 0.2 cubic millimetre accuracy of Infinitrack.

ICU 'reads' facial expressions using a pattern-matching algorithm that has been trained on pictures of people expressing different emotions. Using cues such as the position and shape of the lips, ICU spots five basic states: happiness, anger, surprise, sadness and neutral.

It also has the ability to tune out the visual clutter around a player that could otherwise distort its results. "Once it detects a face 2 metres in front of the cameras, the system can isolate the person by only keeping the information between 1.5 and 2.5 metres away," Marti says.

Immersive advertising

Sophisticated as it is, however, ICU isn't yet going to be launched into the punishing domestic entertainment market, says Arnaud Destruels, marketing manager at Sony's image-sensing division.

"It's clear that if the consumer has a bad experience with the technology they could reject it without giving it a second chance."

Instead ICU is going to be launched first into the world of advertising, which will be its training ground, says Destruels. Interactive shop windows and billboards will provide a chance to iron out wrinkles in the system and to familiarise people with the concept, he says.

Real-time problem

Christian Theobalt, at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, Germany, agrees that people won't be forgiving of a novel interface's failings. "For the consumer to accept this technology it has to work robustly in real time."

Last year Theobalt developed a markerless motion-capture system that uses eight cameras and can track even the sway of clothing. But its footage has to be processed after the fact, a luxury ICU doesn't have.

"If real-time performance is the goal, one has to reduce complexity, which reduces the accuracy one achieves," he explains. Sony will have to balance aiming for complex gesture recognition with the need for dependable performance.

[via New Scientist]

AmericaFree.TV First Annual Virtual Movie Festival Connects Filmmakers, Distributors Virtually Across the Globe

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:15:04 -0500

Washington, D.C., November 05, 2009 | SHOOT Publicity Wire | --- AmericaFree.TV LLC (www.americafree.tv), a leading Television Internet broadcaster, will offer state-of-the-art virtual networking opportunities for independent filmmakers and studio executives at their first annual film festival.

The festival will be held online with an award ceremony in Los Angeles, CA, on February 2, 2010. AFTV is accepting feature-length and short films (45-150 minutes long) of any genre. The regular submission deadline for filmmakers is November 15.

Independent filmmakers whose films are accepted into the film festival will have them distributed in high definition (HD) to the more than 10 million AFTV viewers. AFTV will also include links to each film's website throughout the festival and provide interactive conversations with movie producers and international distributors. There is also potential for virtual "worldwide viewing parties" with festival attendees, fellow filmmakers, and film executives. AmericaFree.TV will also facilitate the sale of distribution rights for Festival movies by offering Telepresence sessions between film-makers and distribution partners. The winner of the virtual movie fest will receive a grand prize of $2,000, a public screening in Los Angeles, CA in concert with film institute, and publicity on behalf of their movie from AmericaFree.TV. "We are reinventing the film festival and transforming it into a virtual gathering," noted Sanna Choe Lund, production manager of the festival. "AFTV's virtual film fest makes it easy to connect communities around great films that might otherwise sit in studio vaults."

Judges for the online film festival will include Chuck Porter (Advertising Executive, Crispin Porter & Bogusky), Eleanor Tagliati (filmmaker), Gigi Johnson (UCLA), Jeff Porro (Writer, The Great Debaters), Bob Eisele (Hollywood Exec), and Sanna Lund (Production Designer, Zentropa films in Copenhagen, Denmark).

"The motion picture industry is going the way of the recording business, and the film festival will have to change with the rest of the industry" said Marshall Eubanks, CEO of AFTV. "Independent film-makers need to start taking advantage of the opportunities provided by new technologies as their old models of finding an audience and distribution will soon cease to work. In addition, our film festival will have a tiny fraction of the carbon footprint of even a small conventional festival."

To submit a film for the AmericaFree.tv Virtual Film Festival, please visit www.americafree.tv, Without a Box (www.withoutabox.com), keyword "AmericaFreeTV", or contact Sanna Choe Lund, Virtual Film Fest Producer at SannaChoeLund@gmail.com.

AmericaFree.TV (AFTV) broadcasts professionally-produced content on 20 channels that can be viewed over the Internet. To learn more about AFTV, visit the AmericaFree.tv site at www.AmericaFree.tv, or learn about AFTV's virtual film festival at www.virtualmoviefestival.com.

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iPeak Networks IPQ Solution Reduces Packet Loss for TP and Videoconferencing

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:32:16 -0500

I recently spoke with Brett McAteer the Vice President of Marketing at IPeak Networks who told me about their new Internet Performance & Quality platform (IPQ), which reduces packet loss for telepresence and videoconferencing. The solutions places a simple to install IPQ device between the telepresence or videoconferencing endpoint and the router. The IPQ device, when packet loss is detected, begins splitting up the packets into segments and injecting redundancy information into different segment which allows the IPQ box on the other side to reconstruct the packets even if some segments are lost.
The benefit for telepresence and videoconferencing network managers is the ability to run packet-loss sensitive TP & VTC traffic over best-effort networks like the Internet and to connect with business partners, vendors, and customers over the Internet for inter-company business. If both companies are running IPQ then the data stream is automatically protected when connecting to disparate organizations.

Most enterprise organizations would require a large capacity 100MBps IPQ Concentrator fronting their MCU and other video network infrastructure. Any telepresence or videoconferencing endpoints that could use a quality improvement when connecting over the internet or disparate networks where packet loss was an issue would receive a low cost IPQ Network Appliance which can be shipped out and easily installed by anyone with two hands and three neurons prior to an important videocall. Small organizations without video network infrastructure would simply require the lost cost appliance for each end-point.

Caveats: The IPeak IPQ solution does not protect against jitter and, like other forward-error correction solutions, increases the total amount of bandwidth required for the call as the redundancy information requires a larger data stream to carry.

Wainhouse Research recently completed an evaluation of the IPeak IPQ technology in their Atlanta Test Lab to see how this unusual solution handled varying degrees of packet loss on a lossy IP network. Their published results:

"The IPeak solution consistently (and automatically) reduced the packet loss received by each video system, in some cases by over 90%. This enabled WR to conduct successful video calls within our test facility at packet loss levels of up to 3%."

To facilitate this effort, IPeak provided WR with two (2) IPQ Network Appliances for use during the evaluation. WR installed the IPeak devices, alongside a number of video endpoints and infrastructure devices, within its Atlanta test lab. WR then conducted two rounds of test calls between the installed systems while inserting increasing levels of packet loss. During the first round of test calls, which WR refers to as the baseline tests, the IPQ technology was disabled. During the second round of calls, the IPQ technology was enabled.

Throughout the testing, WR was impressed by the performance of the IPQ technology. The solution consistently (and automatically) reduced the packet loss received by each video system, in some cases by over 90%. This enabled WR to conduct successful video calls within our test facility at packet loss levels of up to 3%. Based on these findings, WR believes this technology to be well suited for organizations conducting (or looking to conduct) IP videoconferencing sessions over lossy networks - especially those organizations with multi-vendor deployments."

Download the Complete Wainhouse Report Here: http://ipeaknetworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Wainhouse-Research-IPQ-Evaluation-Report.pdf

OppenheimerFunds opposes Cisco offer for Tandberg

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:41:21 -0500

By Ritsuko Ando

NEW YORK - Cisco Systems Inc's $3 billion takeover bid for Norwegian company Tandberg ASA is facing increased opposition, with investors owning as much as 30 percent of the video conferencing company's shares now demanding more money.

Investment adviser OppenheimerFunds, on behalf of funds and accounts owning a 5.78 percent stake in Tandberg, said on Wednesday that it will not agree to sell their 6.48 million shares to Cisco at the current offer price of 153.50 crowns per share.

OppenheimerFunds said it remains open to better offers from Cisco or other strategic partners.

Another investor group, represented by brokerage SEB Enskilda and holding 24 percent of Tandberg shares, snubbed Cisco's bid last month.

OppenheimerFunds spokesman Bruce Dunbar said it was not part of the earlier group.

The deal has been endorsed by Tandberg's board of directors but it needs to be approved by 90 percent of shareholders.

Cisco on Wednesday reiterated its view that the company is offering a fair price for Tandberg.

"Further, Cisco's general approach to M&A activities is that no acquisition should be pursued or completed if it runs counter to the broader principles of prudence and financial fairness," it said in a statement.

A person familiar with the matter had told Reuters last week that Cisco is mulling its options including withdrawing or raising the bid. Tandberg shareholders have until November 9 to accept the tender offer.

Cisco is set to announce its quarterly results on Wednesday, and analysts are listening for Chief Executive John Chambers' comments on the Tandberg deal.

Some analysts have said they expect Cisco to sweeten the offer, while others have said it could play hardball and threaten to drop its bid -- which will likely lead to a drop in Tandberg shares since no other suitor has emerged publicly.

Shares of Cisco closed up 1.7 percent at $23.30. Tandberg shares closed down 0.13 percent at 150.20 euros.

[via Reuters]

Cisco Lays out Why It Might Let Tandberg Go Free

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:51:43 -0500

By Stephen Lawson

Cisco Systems may be laying the groundwork for dropping its US$3 billion offer for videoconferencing vendor Tandberg despite the emphasis it has placed on video as the future of communications.

In a blog post on Monday, Cisco Chief Strategy Officer Ned Hooper responded to reports that the deal might fall through by emphasizing the risks and costs involved and saying the purchase would have to make financial sense in the end.

"The bottom line is that Cisco will always act with fiscal prudence," Hooper wrote.

On Oct. 1, Cisco announced an agreement to buy Tandberg for 153.5 Norwegian Kroner per share, approximately the price of the company's shares at that time. The offer was recommended unanimously by Tandberg's board of directors but still requires approval by 90 percent of the company's shareholders by Nov. 9. But shareholders representing 24 percent of Tandberg's shares reportedly don't plan to accept the deal. They think Tandberg can succeed on its own but are open to a higher offer from Cisco or another suitor, according to reports last month.

Last week, reports citing unnamed sources said Cisco would drop the offer rather than raise it. That might come as a shock to the industry after Cisco increasingly emphasized the importance of video to its networking and its business over the past three years. The company has expanded its Telepresence line of high-definition videoconferencing systems, developed automated video editing and output software, and acquired set-top box maker Scientific-Atlanta in 2006 (US$7 billion) and mini-camcorder maker Pure Digital Technologies earlier this year ($590 million). Cisco has said Tandberg's gear would be integrated into its overall collaboration portfolio.

But in his blog entry, Hooper said the potential rewards of the deal have received more attention than the risks and costs. Those include the challenges of Cisco's first acquisition of a European public company, the complexity of integrating Tandberg's Norwegian and U.K. operations, and currency exchange expenses that have added about $100 million to the overall cost of the deal, he wrote.

Hooper said the deal was a good one and called Cisco's offer a premium of more than 38 percent over Tandberg's share price before July 15, when reports of a possible transaction first surfaced. But by laying out the potential downsides of the deal while emphasizing fiscal responsibility, Hooper may have been preparing a way to back out if the deal doesn't win shareholder approval by the deadline, or showing the objectors that a fatter offer won't be forthcoming.

"We believe the time is right for Cisco and Tandberg to come together," Hooper wrote. "(H)owever, no acquisition should be pursued or completed if it runs counter to the broader principles of prudence and financial fairness."

[via PC World]

From Telepresence to the Desktop - Video Comes Of Age (The video conference room is dead - long live video conferencing)

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:56:25 -0500

A View From The Road - Special Report: A "milepost" perspective on industry activity and what it means for the future of video collaboration.

By David Danto, IMCCA Director of Emerging Technology

From Telepresence to the Desktop - Video Comes Of Age

The video conference room is dead - long live video conferencing

These are exciting times for those of us in the video collaboration industry. Cisco, one of the largest firms in the high tech world has agreed in principle to purchase Tandberg, one of the leaders in the video conferencing industry. While the deal is not completed and still has some hurdles to overcome, on a scale of one to ten this is a solid fifty in terms of the ramifications it presents to the future landscape of our industry.

In order to understand the magnitude and nuances of this approaching upheaval one first has to look back at the history of video conferencing and telepresence. The IMCCA published a comprehensive background on telepresence in the January 2008 edition of Europe's World Commerce Review which provided an in-depth perspective worthy of review. The state of the industry at that time could be summed up as follows:

·   While traditional video conferencing systems represented (and still represent) 99% of the industry, Cisco's entry into the top 1% of the market (telepresence) was a defining and disruptive moment. None of the other manufacturers or providers had the marketing budget and muscle of Cisco.

·   The legacy manufacturers adopted a "we have telepresence too" stance, very content to increase the sales of their telepresence and traditional video products to the rising tide of customers created by Cisco's marketing.

·   The very compelling message of what telepresence provides had not been challenged. There was little incentive to market against the telepresence concept - the idea that big, expensive, high-quality systems "solved the legacy problems" of past, far less expensive solutions - regardless of the inaccuracies that simplistic thinking created.

·   Telepresence systems were being marketed and sold to senior management in the C-suite, with many of the manufacturers bypassing the traditional video and multimedia experts at customer firms in favor of the executives and IT leaders (who usually weren't video product experts and didn't question the inaccurate marketing message.)

So then one might ask why Cisco would feel compelled to purchase Tandberg. The list of good business reasons is a mile long and many are outside the scope of this article. What had become clear though, even before the deal was announced, was that the telepresence marketing message was being forced to change. Cisco themselves were having an "Animal Farm" moment with their TelePresence product.

Their go to market themes in late 2007 were:

In order to maximize ROI on a video system the equipment needs to be installed in a specially designed, dedicated room expressly for the purpose of video. Utilization of that space would be able to achieve numbers in the 80% to 95% range, justifying the increased spending in equipment, bandwidth and facilities. Life-size images are an absolute requirement. Interoperability with legacy video conference gear would ruin the TelePresence experience.

Their new themes in mid 2009 - even before the Cisco-Tandberg deal was announced - were as follows:

Target utilization levels beyond 50% to 60% percent result in end-user frustration due to an inability to reserve a first choice room and/or time.   There is significant value in lesser priced systems being installed in multipurpose rooms - allowing more people to have access to the video tools (and resulting in even lower utilization). Life-size images are really nice but can be somewhat sacrificed on one end of a call in order to bring video to more users. Interoperability with legacy video conference gear is an absolute requirement.

The message had changed significantly. Everything the legacy video and multimedia professional had said about the emerging telepresence space was shown to be true. This tremendous push into the upper 1% of the market garnered the majority of attention but did not significantly change the reality of video systems as they relate to Metcalfe's law - one has to extend the reach of the video systems to many users - more than the telepresence paradigm allows for - in order for the technology to be widely adopted. While many manufacturers did call their single screen systems telepresence whether or not it was true, the reality was that as these screens continued to get smaller and reach wider deployment, "it really wasn't telepresence any more" (just as we said back in January 2008). For all practical purposes, the term telepresence while having a clear definition in its purest state has really just become a more politically correct method of saying video conferencing.

What will the industry look like going forward?

The coming upheaval will have many effects on the current manufacturers, only some of which can we even attempt to predict.

Cisco and Tandberg have put themselves on an interesting path. The combination has already attracted some creative nicknames from our industry, beginning with the obvious "Cisberg" and including my favorite, the Monty Python homage "Norwegian Blue."   There is tremendous speculation about how this newly combined firm would operate. The Cisco TelePresence related business units are a marketing driven operation, very committed to image, message and executive perception. It is not news that engineering prowess and product reliability were not the most important missions in the TelePresence unit there. In contrast, the team at Tandberg always had product engineering and reliability as mission one. On the equipment side one can surely expect a merging / hybrid strategy for a brief period of time. However, in the long run, the better designed products will win out. (If you need to take a car ride, would you choose to take your Lexus or your Pinto?)   One has to assume that the superior C60 and C90 codecs from Tandberg will eventually be the engines for Cisco TelePresence. More than just better, these engines will allow Cisco to adopt a strategy that allows interoperability from the telepresence room to the desktop and everywhere in between. Cisco will now be equipped with a broad range of video products for every use case. Just think of how the personal video appliances will explode when promoted with Cisco's marketing might. In addition, it doesn't take a psychic to realize that with a few tweaks Tandberg's industry leading management platform, TMS, will be the TelePresence management platform Cisco has needed for a long time.

On the operational side, it has already been announced that Tandberg CEO Fredrik Halvorsen will take over control of Cisco's TelePresence team upon completion of the deal. Fredrik and his management team will likely represent a complete change of direction for Cisco's video group, moving it much further toward an open philosophy that will listen to customers and respond with dialog and solutions. (In fairness to the existing Cisco team, there was only so much responsiveness they could provide while locked into the CTS platforms as their only product. As an example, take a peek at one of Cisco's own compatibility matrix websites, showing just how many of their own TelePresence products and firmware versions don't work amongst themselves.)

For the rest of the firms in the industry, the picture isn't as clear. Much has been said about Polycom in the wake of the announcement. They are now clearly positioning themselves as the only choice for a Cisco independent, open platform video solution. The latest industry research showed them actually retaking the lead in global video system sales by a small margin for the first time in years. Andy Miller (ex. Cisco, Tandberg and IPC) has recently joined their executive team as the head of "global field operations" with a clear mandate to help move them into a market leadership position. Polycom may wind up strengthening their relationships with the independent, "Cisco-hating" firms of the world, or they might be the next buy-out target of another large IT vendor, further consolidating the industry. If that happens one has to wonder how long the remaining independent video manufacturers will be able to survive on their own. Video collaboration is changing from a product industry to a solution industry - and to a lesser extent from a hardware to a software industry. Stand-alone hardware manufacturers are surely on the endangered list.

Radvision is in uniquely difficult circumstances. Cisco has been utilizing their products - specifically the innovative Scopia Bridge - as their gateway MCU for TelePresence to connect to standards based video products. If the Cisco-Tandberg deal is consummated Cisco will surely switch to using the Tandberg owned Codian bridges coming along with the deal. It's hard to imagine how Radvision will replace their largest customer.

Two clear categories of winners in the new video world will be managed service providers and B2B connection / exchange providers. If you haven't noticed everybody and their grandmothers are getting into the services and connectivity businesses. There are two big reasons for this. Firstly, the paranoia of IT risk and security teams has finally defeated any hopes of a simple, universal border control / firewall traversal solution for IP video. Regardless of the fact that there is an industry standard and highly effective method of enabling secure external video for any enterprise (that Tandberg helped in fact create) this standard has not been widely adopted. Tandberg was not an IT vendor, and as an outsider they rarely gained the approvals required to place this technology at an enterprise's secured doorstep. The other reason for the explosion of these businesses is simple - money. Many firms have discovered that selling these B2B connection services (and to a lesser extent services to manage all a firm's endpoints) is a wildly lucrative business. Customers will pay barrels full of cash to buy secure connections on private exchanges and the related services (even though they could have achieved them for free if they made their paranoid security groups back down.)   Look for a continued explosion of offerings in this area.

What will video collaboration look like going forward?

When the Cisco-Tandberg deal is completed and their expanded product catalog offers much more than just rigid telepresence systems we will finally start to see a correction in the over-hyping of telepresence. At this point the video collaboration industry will have been forever changed. The idea of a "video conference room" - meaning a place you have to go to to engage in visual collaboration - will go away, just as the phone booth did when you no longer needed to go somewhere special just to participate in a voice call.

Three paradigms for video will survive: Desktop Video, Telepresence and the Video Equipped Meeting Room.

Corporate executives have certainly embraced telepresence as an excellent system for visual collaboration - in comparison to their legacy equipment. However, no executives are going to prefer going to a shared room they have to wait in line to reserve when they can make a telepresence quality call from a personal 24" screen on their desk. The Cisco-Tandberg deal clearly means that desktop video is about to break-out in a huge manner, far displacing telepresence as the industry darling. Some reasons for this are:

The desktop appliance is far less expensive than the telepresence room

It requires no sunk costs - no "construction dependencies" to activate or utilize

It can be installed, removed and relocated with no loss of investment

Widespread use of them will require a heck of a lot more bandwidth and connectivity within the enterprise (a reality that makes Cisco's network infrastructure people happy I'm sure)

It is personal - requiring no reservation and always available - matching the long sought after promise of "video dial tone"

At the same time, other unified communications vendors are pushing the concept of "free desktop video" through an enterprise's PCs. Microsoft OCS as an example offers "click to connect" escalation of IM sessions to voice and video calls - even HD quality video calls with the right camera. Soon a lot of people will be adopting the desktop video paradigm in a big way, making the need to go somewhere to have a video call a thing of the past.

People will still utilize truly immersive telepresence rooms, but only when they are appropriate - when two groups of people need to meet in face-to-face meetings for extended periods of time. Regardless of what the manufacturers call it, the "one screen telepresence room" will fade away.

This leaves the third paradigm, the meeting room. As stated above you'll no longer go to a conference room just to make a video call. However, if you have a real need for an in person team meeting, and one or more of the required participants can't be in the place where the meeting is being held, video will be available in appropriately equipped rooms to be utilized in much the same manner that the speakerphone on the conference table is today - as a tool to allow this remote site to join. This evolution of conference room video will also bring richer collaboration tools, so teams can share and interact with data and content.

With these three models - Desktop Video, Telepresence and the Video Equipped Meeting Room - we will see the end of the video conference room as we knew it, but at the same time we will see the widespread adoption and continued growth of video throughout our culture and businesses.

Death to the video conference room - long live video conferencing!

------------------------------------

A View From The Road is written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions. David has spent 31 years in the audio visual and broadcasting industries. He has designed facilities for firms such as AT&T, Bloomberg LP, FNN, Morgan Stanley, NYU and Lehman Brothers. He has recently joined JPMorgan Chase & Company and is the IMCCA's Director of Emerging Technology. Email David at David.Danto.IMCCA@Danto.com

About the IMCCA

The Interactive Multimedia & Collaborative Communications Alliance (IMCCA) is a not-for-profit user application and industry focused association with membership comprised of service and product providers, consultants, and users. Members benefit from the understanding and the use of various interactive and collaborative communications technologies in their professional and everyday lives.

For further information please contact Carol Zelkin, IMCCA Executive Director, at 516-818- 8184 or czelkin@imcca.org. Visit the IMCCA web site at www.imcca.org

Telepresence Industry Professionals Dinner - Los Angeles (Marina Del Ray), CA - Wednesday, Nov 11th

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:46:42 -0500

PRESENCE 2009 / Telepresence Industry Professionals Dinner - Wednesday, Nov 11th 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM - Marina Del Ray, CA

Industry meets academia at a dinner for Telepresence Industry Professionals and researchers from the PRESENCE 2009 Conference. The dinner is open to members of the telepresence, videoconferencing, and visual collaboration industries interested in the next generation of telepresence technologies or just meeting and networking with other members of the industry and some of the leading researchers in telepresence, presence, and virtual reality. If you are in our Linked In association Telepresence Industry Professionals all the better but any and all legitimate industry participants are invited to join us.

Details:

Wednesday Evening, 6:30 PM
Dress: Casual
Economics: Dutch Treat
Hosts: Howard S. Lichtman, Publisher - Telepresence Options
Matthew Lombard, President - International Society of Presence Research

Tony P's Dockside Grill
4445 Admiralty Way, Marina Del Rey, CA
(310) 823-4534
http://www.tonyps.com

Directions Via Google Maps

Please RSVP to HSL(at)HumanProductivityLab(dot)com

Cisco to Tandberg Shareholders: You'll Accept $3.04 billion and Like It

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:08:16 -0500

by John Paczkowski

Cisco has a message for Tandberg shareholders pressing the networking giant to raise its $3.04 billion offer for the company: Take it or we're leaving.

Sources tell Bloomberg that Cisco (CSCO) has little intention of meeting the demands of a group of investors who would like it to reach a bit deeper into its wallet before they hand over their 24 percent stake in Tandberg, the world's second largest manufacturer of videoconferencing kit. Cisco would rather walk away than sweeten a bid that represents a 38.3 percent premium on Tandberg's closing share price on the day before news of a possible acquisition broke.

Or that's what Cisco wants them to think, anyway. Because scrapping what is a pretty strategic deal for the company would be silly at this point given Cisco's huge cash reserves. Rumors that it would "strongly consider walking away" from Tandberg are likely more gamesmanship than anything else.

"I think it's quite unlikely that they'll drop their offer, everything points to them buying Tandberg," Arctic Securities analyst Martin Hoff told Bloomberg. "It's probably smart of them to send some signals to scare the shareholders into accepting the offer."

[via All Things Digital]

Polycom profit meets estimates, gives strong Q4 outlook

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:11:18 -0500

* Q3 adj. EPS $0.31 matches estimates

* Q3 rev beats estimates

* Q4 outlook stronger than expected (Adds details from conference call)

By S. John Tilak

BANGALORE, Oct 20 - Video conferencing company Polycom Inc posted a quarterly profit in line with market estimates, as increasing competition and softer margins overshadowed stronger-than-expected revenue, sending its shares down almost 5 percent.

However, the company gave a better-than-expected outlook for the fourth quarter.

For the fourth quarter, it forecast sequential revenue growth of 4 percent to 6 percent, which would be $252.7 million to $257.6 million. Analysts were looking for revenue of $247.6 million.

Polycom projected gross margins of 59.5 percent, an improvement from third-quarter gross margins of 58.8 percent.

"The (third quarter) earnings were light because of lower-than-expected operating margins," William Blair & Co analyst Jason Ader said.

While noting that the sequential revenue growth was a positive, Ader said performance at the video business was disappointing.

"I think they're losing market share to Tandberg," he said.

In the third quarter, revenue topped Wall Street expectations due to a sequential improvement in both the video and voice businesses.

The video segment contributed $165 million, or 68 percent, to revenue. Voice communications added $78 million, or 32 percent, to revenue, compared with $69 million in the second quarter.

"It looks like a recovery in the voice business," Morgan Keegan analyst Tavis McCourt said.

An improvement in the voice business indicates a recovery in technology spending as it is viewed as a discretionary expense.

Earlier this month, Cisco Systems signed a deal to buy Tandberg, Polycom's Norwegian rival, for $3 billion. In the wake of that deal, Polycom is considered an acquisition candidate.

Investors have been looking to gauge the impact of the Cisco-Tandberg deal on Polycom.

Third-quarter net income fell to $13.7 million, or 16 cents a share, from $17.9 million, or 21 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company earned 31 cents a share.

Revenue rose 5 percent to $243 million.

Analysts were looking for earnings of 31 cents a share, excluding exceptional items, on revenue of $236.4 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Polycom shares were down $1.17 at $25.20 in trading after the bell. They closed at $26.37 Tuesday on the Nasdaq.

[via Reuters]