The Big Picture: 3 Low-End Internet Video Servers; Plus 4 Sneak Peeks at LAN/ Campus High-Bandwidth Video Servers
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Most of us use analog video at the office for training, corporate communications and sales, and at home we view televised analog broadcast video for news or entertainment on a daily basis. We still appreciate the video quality achieved with this aging technology, but we're so used to its constraints--limited access coaxial video nets, limited broadcast programming available at set times, no linkage to related information resources and high costs for external video dissemination--that we are challenged to imagine what digital networked video can do for us.
Well, picture this: two-way and multiparty interactive videoconferencing, video on demand from any corporate desktop, video-enhanced Web applications accessible anywhere on the Internet and extremely inexpensive video-monitoring tools.
Whether video is needed for sales, internal c
orporate communications, training, telemedicine, security monitoring, distance learning or manufacturing process monitoring, there are network digital video solutions worth your consideration.
An example at the high end of the realm of network video possibilities might be a large Midwestern university medical complex that is extending its campus. It needs to deliver high-quality ultrasound scanner video across its network and is intent on implementing ATM-based video solutions, the first step in a larger project to consolidate circuit and packet-services onto a single network.
At the low end, there is the MIS director at a small nonprofit human services agency, who also is chief financial officer and security director. He wants to monitor activities at the office during evening hours, so he installs a $99 camera on his PC so he can "see" what's going on via modem from home.
Most network managers' video needs fall somewhere in between. They crave a way to improve limited analog video applications and coaxial cable video networks, while adding innovative digital video delivery for internal and external use--all to spur sales or enhance competitiveness at reasonable expense.
With that in mind, we tested several products that offer client/server, one-to-many video delivery. In addition to testing four high-end ATM and IP video solutions that promise advanced video quality and scalability across your enterprise network (see page 77), we evaluated three products you can use to deliver one-to-many video across your intranet using standard Intel Corp. microprocessor-based client and server technology. These products can't match the high-end solutions in terms of ability to scale up to lots of video streams at high quality, but they can deliver reasonably good video at low cost. But first, here are some issues we found compelling during our product testing.
Tune In
Network video is still in its infancy. While cable companies and telcos have been exploring set-top box-based video on demand (VOD), ne
ar video on demand (NVOD) and interactive TV for consumers, the Web has come along and established the Internet and the PC as the actual starting points for the information highway. Now, the Web interface also is becoming a focus
 for Infobahn interactive services, including video. Similarly, the momentum in enterprise networking is solidly behind the intranet, and here again, the Web browser offers a universal interface.
Video on the Internet/intranet may not be the best approach in the long run, given the need for major redesign and reengineering before quality can be ensured, but it does provide a cost-effective enterprise solution now, and it will enable digital video across a truly public network within a few years.
While IP-based video is clearly important in the short term, the role of ATM can't be overlooked. ATM as a backbone technology facilitates video over IP networks. ATM also may finally get to play a role as a higher-level transport, if IP outlives its usefulness, as some predict, given the demands of digital video and other real-time media.
The Endpoints
Today's typical PC with fast Pentium processor, Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus, 16-bit sound and a capable video accelerator and 2 MB of video RAM offers a viable platform for quality video-content delivery. Intel's multimedia extensions (MMX) instruction set figures to make the CPU more capable of handling video decoding and other multimedia operations, minimizing the need for add-in boards.
The PC can be easily and inexpensively equipped as a low-end video capture device. Of course, the PC we know and love may not emerge in the long run as the digital video network access device of choice; the boundaries of TV and PC will blur considerably in the future, with interesting but currently unsettled implications for the network and the user interface.
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