Video Pros Pursue Conferencing with Nuance

The first “picture phone” was one of the hits of the New York World''s Fair in 1964. Not too long after that, comic book detective Dick Tracy replaced his famous “two-way wrist radio” with a “two-way wrist TV.” The age of real-time, face-to-face video meetings seemed about to dawn.

After all these years, it still is. Ann Earon, president of Telemanagement Resources International (www.triinc.com) and immediate past chair of the Interactive Multimedia and Collaborative Communications Alliance, comments that “in almost four decades, videoconferencing remains a niche market. The technology has been over-promised and under-delivered.”

A growing list of vendors and designers aim to change that situation, with a new approach to conferencing based on high quality bandwidth and the highest quality video display available. In their view, it has been largely the video shortcomings that have kept videoconferencing from really hitting the mainstream.

“There''s definitely a place for this in the marketplace,” says Earon, “for people who have a need for a feeling of ‘being there'' and don''t like the herky-jerky you get with the current technology.”

This so-called “interactive telepresence” typically relies on about 5 megabits of bandwidth and uses high resolution video screens 50 inches or larger. Alan Brawn, president of Telanetix (www.telanetix.com) in San Diego, notes that the technology is “display agnostic” but adds, “A 50-inch plasma pretty much works.”

Interactive telepresence may be largely targeted at the corporate marketplace, but the entertainment industry is proving to be among its early adopters, says Michael Clark, a partner in Avidex, Redmond, WA. Motion picture creators can use the technology to view and discuss movie dailies at a distance, combining cinema-like image quality with real-time, life-size conferencing.

Some television, movie and theatrical execs are also looking at telepresence as a means of conducting performer auditions, script readings, and wardrobe sessions. In fact, Telanetix has launched a subsidiary called Hollywood Bridge, headed by actor Corbin Bernsen, to pursue this market.

The key appeal, Clark says, is that “you just get the feeling that you''re standing there talking to someone.” This approach to conferencing delivers all of the nuances of face-to-face communication, which can be so vital in acting and directing.

Emphasizing high quality video display may also give the video pro a new way to interact with corporate and other information technology specialists. Clark notes that the video displays associated with interactive telepresence can be provided by an AV integrator as part of a turnkey package or acquired separately by the client. Either way, the new system “is simple to use, always works, and offers incredible quality.”

For the IT community, it can mean a new level of highly reliable, high capacity connectivity that can be available for other organizational uses when it isn''t supporting conferencing. Or, the conferencing function and its hunger for bandwidth can be set apart from other network needs

As Brawn puts it, “our niche is to provide an environment-to-environment experience, with full sized images of the participants, full eye contact with body language, and to do so in a manner that takes the technology out of your face.”