Lifesize to offer Videoconferencing on the Cloud
LifeSize announced it’s new video collaboration platfrom – LifeSize Connections.
LifeSize connections will offer HD video calling with full connectivity to LifeSize video conferencing rooms, [Read more...]
Industry News Summary – LifeSize, Kinect Chat, Telepresence Guide & More
July 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Industry News – Umi Interop, RCS-e, Skype & Panasonic and more
March 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Cisco Umi Interoperability
Cisco announced that it’s Home Telepresence offering – Umi, will be interoperatable with ‘Umi-Connect‘ – A umi software client for Mac and PC and Cisco’s professional Telepresence systems.
This announcement puts Umi in a whole different perspective, as Umi can now be used for business purposes, i.e – home workers.
In addition, Cisco revelaed a new 720P only version, for a cheaper $399 price and lowered the monthly fee (for a yearly plan) to 9.95$ a month from 24.99$ a month.
Lack of interoperability and high ownership cost were major points of criticism when Cisco introduce Umi and it remains to be seen how this latest move will improve Umi acceptance in home and SOHO markets.
3G4G blog posted a short article about RCS (or in it’s latest form – RCS-e)
The article gives a good overview of what RCS is, and is a recommended read. Back in July 2010 we interviewed Jose M.Recio from Solaimes about RCS and it’s relevancy in the age of the smartphone – As it seems, it’s still is.
Panasonic Viera Blu-ray players to include Skype
Panasonic announced Skype support for it’s new blu-ray player line (2011). Video-Chat will be supported via the Freetalk Conference Camera, which will cost 99$ and be available starting this month.
Spectrume Reform Legistlation
US Senators Olympia Snowe and John Kerry recently introduced the Reforming Airwaves by Developing Incentives and Opportunistic Sharing (RADIOS) Act. The proposed RADIOS Act aims to provide FCC and NTIA detailed information needed for smarter allocation of the Radio spectrum.
LTE sprint
Spirt is one of the few operators in USA that use CDMA for voice and data connectivity – Steve Elfman, Sprint’s president of network operations said that the company will make a decision regarding LTE in mid-year, however if Sprint does decide to use LTE it could be deployed by year-end 2013.
IMTC 2010, A year summary
January 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment
It’s been a great year for IMTC and the Telecom Industry as a whole, some of our 2010 highlights Were:
* IMTC 2025 Global Virtual Conference was held in April 7th-8th using Radvision’s Scopia and lifestream platforms for broadcast. In the 2025 event we looked into the question – “How will your living room look like in the year 2025?” The two day event was a phenomenal success and attracted hundreds of viewers and many participants from major companies in the Telecom and Video conferencing fields (Cisco, Polycom, Radvision, NXP, PV and more). All the Videos from the 2025 event are available in our Youtube page and Here.
* SuperOP! 2010 - The annual industry flagship interoperability testing event, was highly successful and brought together more than 50 engineers from 14 companies from around the world. IMTC president Anatoli Levine wrote about it: “SuperConnect 2010, consisting of about 35 endpoints and servers, including a 3-screen telepresence system, took about 37 minutes from start to finish, with brilliant High Definition Video shining all over the room”.
* IMTC SIP Parity AG participated in SIPit27 Event – This year event was focused mainly on Video Interoperability, rather than voice. You can read the event summary Here.
* IMTC took ownership of the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) protocol and established a new TIP Activity Group. Read the TIP section for more details or send an email to TIP_info@imtc.org.
* IMTC First TIP Webinar was held at December 08. We had connectivity problems that prevented some of the speakers and registered users to participate – We apologize for that and will offer recordings of the event.
Additional TIP events are planned – further updates will be announced via our blog.
* IMTC Annual Meeting was held in November 3, 2010. IMTC had a joint panel on the future of video with speakers from IMTC, UCIF and SIP Forum.
* IMTC President, Anatoli Levin Participated at AppTime Conference in LA, at the 4GWE/ITExpo event. Anatoli was also interviewed by Erin Monda for TMCNET 4GWE news.
* IMTC IMS AG leader and BoD member, Andrea Basso, participated at the 3G00/ETSI IMS November 2010 workshop on Implementation, Deployment and Testing.
We are looking forwards into 2011 events and activities – Stay Tuned!
Industry News Summary – Home Telepresence, Mobile
October 8, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Home Telepresence
The term “Home Telepresence” was practically coined this week, by Cisco – but they are not the only one to play this game. Cisco’s offering Umi (Pronounced yoo-me) include 1080p video communication, pan-tilt camera that sits on top of a HDTV set – and when used with a proper high bandwidth connection (3.5mbps) it does offer quality previously seen only in High-End Telepresence systems. However in a price of 599$ and 30$ subscription fee and availability of home connections with 3.5mbps upload rate – I’ts hardly a mass-market product. TMC-net even went further and wrote a post called 10 Reasons Why Cisco Umi Will Fail – most of their claims are solvable via interoperability.
Cisco umi
Next is Logitech, which offers a camera add-on for their Google TV product - Revue.
Revue isn’t a video-conferencing device, it’s a multimedia device based on the Google TV platform – viewed by many as (together with similar products like Boxee-box) as the beginning of a new era in Interactive Television.
Logitech camera add-on allows for 720p video communication, in a similar way to Cisco’s umi – The camera sits on the top of the HDTV set, although it doesn’t have pan-tilt mechanism but it does use a wide-angle lens. Eric Kintz, the general manager of Logitech’s video business responded to Cisco umi announcement in a mail to Telepresence Options – “We congratulate Cisco on bringing video calling to the living room – it’s a great day for consumers and the video communications industry. We’re excited to introduce our own HD video calling offering for the living room with our Logitech Revue with Google TV announcement later
today. We believe consumers want the best and most seamless experience which means
HD video calling not only from TV to TV, but also TV to PC or Mac (or vice versa). We also
believe consumers will want a free service and one that is integrated into a broader
entertainment experience, which is why Logitech is excited to introduce an integrated HD
video calling offering with Google TV.”
We have yet to see similar products from other manufacture, but it’s worth mentioning the following:
Skype offers skype integration with HDTV sets from Panasonic, LG and Samsung. While Skype software client allows for HD video-conferencing when used on a powerful PC and a HD camera.
Panasonic announced its VC500 video-conferencing system, that feature-wise is very similar to Cisco Umi – The VC500 is based on a codec, two HD cameras that strangely seem to be a modified versions of their consumer HD camcorders and a 360 degree microphone. Unlike Umi, the VC500 is aimed for SMB/Education/Health market – It remains to be seen if Panasonic will offer a more basic solution for consumers like an integrated codec for HDTV sets.
Apple with its iChat and Facetime protocol is in an easy position to bring Telepresence to the masses. The new Apple TV is priced at a mere 99$, and since it includes a USB port it could be possible that webcam add-on will show up one day.
Video Streaming 35% of mobile data
Allot mobile trends report shows that video streaming makes up 35% of mobile data, while Youtube is 40% out of it.
VoIP and IM on the other hand, takes only 3% – and 80% out of it is Skype traffic.
The full report can be downloaded here.
Nokia will build phones for LightSquared 4G network
According to Bloomberg, “Nokia will provide LightSquared customers with branded, data-centric products, Reston, Virginia-based LightSquared said today in a statement, without elaborating.” Read more at intomobile.
Eric Kintz, VP and general manager of Logitech’s video business
IMTC SuperOp! 2010 – Interoperability. Evolving
July 8, 2010 By 2 Comments
And so another busy week became a history. IMTC SuperOp!, annual industry flagship interoperability testing event, brought together more than 50 engineers from 14 companies from around the world in a small town of Jesi in Italy, to continue enhancing interoperability of multimedia communications products.
SuperOp Testings
Of course you can not drive forward by constantly looking into a rearview mirror. Not looking in to that mirror at all is also dangerous ( especially for those who likes to drive fast 
).
Reflecting on the past, it is easy to see how much the level of interoperability improved and evolved. Decade ago, an hour long testing time slot was spent on properly registering with the server, and then may be making one successful simple call (or not). Video did look decent on a small screen ( with huge piece of hardware behind it to make it work).
The term “HD Video” was not even coined yes. And the term “telepresence” was unheard of, at least in the practical terms. SuperConnect, a culmination point of a week-long testing, which was connecting all devices passed the preliminary testing, would take more than half a day to achieve.
).Reflecting on the past, it is easy to see how much the level of interoperability improved and evolved. Decade ago, an hour long testing time slot was spent on properly registering with the server, and then may be making one successful simple call (or not). Video did look decent on a small screen ( with huge piece of hardware behind it to make it work).
The term “HD Video” was not even coined yes. And the term “telepresence” was unheard of, at least in the practical terms. SuperConnect, a culmination point of a week-long testing, which was connecting all devices passed the preliminary testing, would take more than half a day to achieve.
Fast forward 10 years. To cut the chase as anyone in the industry can figure out the particulars, the SuperConnect 2010, consisting of about 35 endpoints and servers, including a 3-screen telepresence system, took about 37 minutes from start to finish, with brilliant High Definition Video shining all over the room.
Inter-operable Indeed!
Can we now gleefully rest on laurels and declare “mission accomplished”? You guessed it right, the simple two letter answer is “no”. Video communication is only starting to become personal and getting into homes. Mobile video communication is still largely non-existent, and both personal and mobile communication being extremely clustered (read: uninteroperable) as the very least. We are starting (only now) to define telepresence standards which will later on lead to the interoperable implementations. The work just started in various IMTC Activity Groups on other important communication technologies, such as VoLTE and Live Streaming over HTTP. All in all, there is a lot of exciting work ahead of us on making the world better connected (and, therefore, smaller) place – so come on over and will see you all next year at IMTC SuperOp! 2011!
