Video Conferencing, and poor corporate vendors.
Category Video Playstation
There are quite a few options for video conferencing services out there, CISCO have some really impressive capabilities with their Telepresence stuff, Sametime has some new video codecs in Sametime 8.5 and the capability for other vendors to be video end points, and Skype offers great video.
Skype really is the problem, as are many of the other consumer based offerings for enterprise Video. Why is it a problem, well most of them just work and for most people they work well enough. So when you get a user that's been using Skype at home and now they come to the office and they're told they can use the new wizbang capabilities of Microsoft OCS and they suddenly find it has problems navigating firewalls or some other problem, they just don't get it, and why should they? Skype just works.
At the weekend I attached a $30 Playstation 3 camera to my Playstation 3 ($299), from there I was able to pick my brother from my friends list (and up to 4 other people) and start an audio video call with him. Video resolution for each participant was 640x480, refersh rate was great and audio quality was up there with Skype quality. Also the PS3 has the added capability of voice changer, which can lead to lots of fun with young kids.
Anyway so what am I getting at apart from rambling, well for $339, you can get a video end point for your organization, if you had 10 remote locations, you could install a PS3 camera in each remote location, for a total of about $3390, which if you compare that to some of the corporate offerings out there, you realize that is pretty cheap in comparison, but if you compare the video quality (to systems other than the Cisco telepresence stuff) a lot of users would be hard pressed to see a difference, and guess what, it just worked with my firewall his firewall, no signing into VPNs no fussing with settings, and that's the problem for corporate vendors, the cheap stuff just works, no need for consultants, no need for special network settings, and users want to know why.
Before anyone says, I do realize enterpise solutions have other requirements, Security etc. but end users just see something at home that works, and wonder why the expensive stuff at the office, sometimes doesn't.
If you're wondering what it means to have a voice changer, here's a video my brother posted of me chatting with my niece, we told her she was chatting with the dog when she wasn't interested in chatting with me, all of a sudden she was much more interested. Sadly my brother had my camera on full screen, but you can see my niece in the bottom right hand corner.
This video shows pretty well the PS3 camera quality.
There are quite a few options for video conferencing services out there, CISCO have some really impressive capabilities with their Telepresence stuff, Sametime has some new video codecs in Sametime 8.5 and the capability for other vendors to be video end points, and Skype offers great video.
Skype really is the problem, as are many of the other consumer based offerings for enterprise Video. Why is it a problem, well most of them just work and for most people they work well enough. So when you get a user that's been using Skype at home and now they come to the office and they're told they can use the new wizbang capabilities of Microsoft OCS and they suddenly find it has problems navigating firewalls or some other problem, they just don't get it, and why should they? Skype just works.
At the weekend I attached a $30 Playstation 3 camera to my Playstation 3 ($299), from there I was able to pick my brother from my friends list (and up to 4 other people) and start an audio video call with him. Video resolution for each participant was 640x480, refersh rate was great and audio quality was up there with Skype quality. Also the PS3 has the added capability of voice changer, which can lead to lots of fun with young kids.
Anyway so what am I getting at apart from rambling, well for $339, you can get a video end point for your organization, if you had 10 remote locations, you could install a PS3 camera in each remote location, for a total of about $3390, which if you compare that to some of the corporate offerings out there, you realize that is pretty cheap in comparison, but if you compare the video quality (to systems other than the Cisco telepresence stuff) a lot of users would be hard pressed to see a difference, and guess what, it just worked with my firewall his firewall, no signing into VPNs no fussing with settings, and that's the problem for corporate vendors, the cheap stuff just works, no need for consultants, no need for special network settings, and users want to know why.
Before anyone says, I do realize enterpise solutions have other requirements, Security etc. but end users just see something at home that works, and wonder why the expensive stuff at the office, sometimes doesn't.
If you're wondering what it means to have a voice changer, here's a video my brother posted of me chatting with my niece, we told her she was chatting with the dog when she wasn't interested in chatting with me, all of a sudden she was much more interested. Sadly my brother had my camera on full screen, but you can see my niece in the bottom right hand corner.
This video shows pretty well the PS3 camera quality.
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Comments
cheers, N.
Posted by Neil Agate At 08:28:37 PM On 12/15/2009 | - Website - |
Posted by Eric! At 03:15:13 AM On 12/16/2009 | - Website - |
Posted by Eric! At 03:15:50 AM On 12/16/2009 | - Website - |