Experience TelePresence and you will never want to attend a video conference again.
That is the reaction from all the people I know who have attended presentations on TelePresence. Sure it is a video conference of sorts; it just seems so real that you want to reach out to the people across the table even though they could be on the other side of the world.
When video conferencing first came about it used a 3 x128 kbps ISDN line giving a combined bandwidth of 384 kbps. Everyone heralded it as a great invention and predicted that it would save millions of bucks on travel as staff from around the country could get around the video screen. And that is exactly what put people off, watching their colleagues on a large TV monitor. Later the monitor was replaced by a video projector but there was no real connection between the people. Needless to say that many a video conference facility got mothballed as attendances started to dwindle.
Some of the larger companies became a little more innovative and build a small studio with a set and produced a bit more of a show when executives were presenting sales figures or annual reports. But for audience on the other side it remained an impersonal medium. It reminds me of old time movies starring Abbott and Costello where images on the screen were jerky. The same happens on a video conference when the chairman starts waving his hands when he tries to explain that sales are too low. The only difference is that it now is in colour, well some sort of colour.
It is interesting that video conferencing failed to create intimacy while other video collaboration systems used for one on one video conferencing provides more intimacy. Take Skype for instance a video call between you and your son or daughter or grandchildren overseas gives you that warm fuzzy feeling.
Well now TelePresence has come about. An intimate video conferencing room is created on both sides of the link. The two rooms are often identical. A very large screen or video wall is in front of you which shows the other conference room many thousands of kilometres away. It is so real that you get the feeling that the people in say London are sitting across the table from you – virtual reality at its highest level!
The secret lies in the placing of the cameras, microphones and speakers providing surround sound that is so real that the person could be in the room with you.
Currently the only drawback is the amount of bandwidth that is required, any where between 10 and 20 megabytes to carry the high resolution video and audio signals. With that, some integrated codecs and other software, video conferencing vendors could deliver the promised savings on conference travel.