In recent months LG Electronics, Panasonic and Samsung have announced television sets that allow people to view online content such as videos and photos through an easy-to-use web interface that’s built into the TV. What this also can enable is two way video communications – though the cameras need to be separately purchased from the television.

Earlier this week GIPS held a webinar on the topic ‘Is the Television the next Two-Way Communication Tool?’ If you didn’t have a chance to listen to the webinar, you can always listen to the recorded version. We took polls from the live audience, as what better way to affirm our own research conclusions on the TV as a future two-way communication tool.

We directed 4 polls to the audience and 400 people provided the following results:

As TV audiences have fragmented and evolved their tastes, the television has become less central to the home/family experience.  The evolution of the TV as an interactive device has the ability to take back ground lost as a focal point in the home – recapturing the living room perhaps. 98 percent of poll respondents view the TV as becoming an interactive consumer electronic device and perhaps competing with the PC.

The live webinar audience was a solid mix of broadcast industry professionals, so it was interesting to see their response to this question: Who will benefit most from two-way communication via the TV? There are opportunities for all slices within the broadcast industry but ultimately who will benefit is the user. While we didn’t include the end user in this poll, our assumption was that the TV watcher will ultimately benefit in the long run.

While this next poll would be better directed towards consumers – it was interesting nonetheless to gauge the industry professionals’ opinion.

Finally, we asked the broadcast audience when they see the rollout of interactive programming and TVs. Well it’s already happening and as we discussed in the webinar. Oprah, CNN and Sports reporting are just a few of the places this is already happening.  The times are a changing for the broadcast industry and as Charles Darwin said: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Practice what you preach or eat your own dog food as they say around here. Well, Cisco is not only eating their own dog food they’re also saving over a half billion dollars in travel expenses yearly by doing it.  It’s not great for the airline industry but it’s saving a lot of time, money, stress, airport time and as a consequence far more environmentally friendly of Cisco.

Cisco’s high-end Telepresence system is not cheap but for large companies it can be a huge cost-saving. Who would have thought just a few years ago that the likes of Cisco, HP and Tandberg would be competing against airlines? While it’s true that there is nothing like meeting someone in person, most contact is currently over the phone or via email. People who have been interviewed about their experience with video communication have stated that this has strengthened their relationship and provide greater confidence in decision making, greater empathy and importantly how efficient meeting were with video communication.

However, what if you don’t have a telepresence system in your office? Well desktop video conferencing will become more prevalent in my opinion. Already on the consumer-level users have accepted video chat into their lives – enterprise needs to keep up and it will only be a matter of time. HSBC, a major banking chain is already planning their desktop video conferencing solution.

With desktop video conferencing there is also the opportunity to hold impromptu meetings, which isn’t possible with Telepresence – so there is a vast opportunity with the desktop. Look you’re sitting at one now, we could be video chatting!

The difference with the desktop is that instead of all the hardware and specially built conference room – all you will need is the software and hopefully you’ll be using one of GIPS’ customers for your desktop video conferencing. Stay tuned…

I was talking to Jan the other day about how little American television broadcast news actually reports news.  Is it because they have spent all of their money investing in visual effects and so little on paying reporters to gather the news?  As a case in point, the election coverage last Fall introduced a number of very expensive effects.  I found an interesting article in Broadcast Engineering discussing some of these effects and their relative impact.  I am not saying that the virtual interviews done by CNN weren’t a creative way to have an interview with someone who might be a world away (parodied here).  I think that there are really good uses of telepresence which can be augmented by the projection of somebody not in the room in a way that makes you feel that they are.  John Chambers from Cisco recently demonstrated this in India. On NBC, I also found it interesting how by twisting the rendered images of two talking heads slightly towards each other, there was more of an impression that they were in fact talking to each other instead of into space.  However, the content is still the key ingredient in making these effects matter.  Getting back to the conclusion of the article in Broadcast Engineering:

Despite all the technology, the most memorable part of the night featured no special effects at all.  President-elect Barack Obama’s dramatic appearance and speech before 1 million-plus emotional people in Chicago’s Grant Park was watched by more than 71 million viewers. 

Clearly, having meaningful content to broadcast is key to successful television just as having something meaningful to say is the key to successful communication.

With offices all over the world, we at GIPS use our own video solutions as much as possible for internal meetings. If you have tried the Cisco Telepresence solution, you know that video conferencing can be great. But with the enormous cost to set up such meeting rooms, many of us are still hesitating. Our focus at GIPS is video processing software, but it is important to realize that hardware plays a big role in the end-user experience. After testing all kinds of equipment at a variety of price points, we have settled on a hardware solution that we think is good enough to make video conferencing an amazing experience. By running our VideoEngine demo software with the following setup, we are able to approximate a telepresence experience at a much lower cost.

The GIPS San Francisco Video Conference Room

PC
Any standard PC with a decent quad core processor will do. With that kind of processing power, you can go all the way up to full-HD video coding. The key is to keep this PC dedicated to the meeting software only. It’s easy to think that you can re-use a lab/demo/test/presentation machine – but that means that the PC will never be ready when you need it. Trust me, we have tried
Cost: $1000

Camera

USB web cams are getting better and better, but they are still not sophisticated enough to be able to shoot a whole meeting room with several participants. One big problem is that the frame rate drops as soon as the lighting is not ideal. In addition, it is nice to have a true optical zoom function, and the ability to fit the camera on a real tripod. We have found that a standard consumer grade HDV camera gives you the best result for limited money. Have a look at for example Canon HV30 or Sony HDR-HC9.

Cost: $800

Displaying the video

Here you have two options: either re-use the projector that you probably already have in your meeting room, or buy a dedicated LCD-TV. Bigger is better. For the projector option, make sure you can find a lighting level in the room that’s OK for both the camera and looking at the screen.

Cost: 0-$2000

Additional items

HDMI capture card $250

High quality conference microphone $500

Monitor speaker: $200

Your total bill will end up at $3000-$5000 per meeting room. Feel like spending more? Have a look at the Sony EVI-HD1 camera. The camera alone will set you back 5K, but the video quality is amazing – and you get a nifty remote control for zooming and panning.