Vidyo Next Generation Video Conferencing Coming To Japanese Telco

Vidyo, a company that has developed videoconferencing technology that can deliver high-quality images over the Internet and conventional IP networks, is being adopted by a Japanese telecommunications company to deliver a videoconference service to its customers.

Vidyo announced today that its platform, VidyoConferencing, which is based on the H.264 scalable video coding (SVC) compression standard, will be used by KDDI, a Japanese carrier that offers both wireless and wireline service, beginning in January. KDDI will market a video conference service to businesses and individuals to deliver high-quality video over common networks and end user devices, including HD TV monitors, desktop and laptop computers and smartphones.

Vidyo's architecture, based on SVC, has advantages over the current multipoint control unit (MCU) platform for high-definition video conferencing, such as that used by Cisco Systems' TelePresence technology, says Marty Hollander, senior VP of marketing at Vidyo. The MCU architecture requires dedicated network connectivity between locations and expensive hardware. But since Vidyo's product is software-based, it can be installed on an enterprise's network and any devices accessing the network can use it, Hollander says.

Although SVC is an industry standard that any company can use, Vidyo adds unique intellectual property to its solution that gives it a "10 to 100 times price-performance advantage," says Andrew Davis, a co-founder of Wainhouse Research. "It's a huge, huge advantage."

Vidyo's architecture is based on a video router that is not an MCU, but it provides many of the functions of an MCU, Davis explains. It takes streams in from the person sending video and distributes them to multiple recipients on different end point devices.Carriers like KDDI can use Vidyo to deliver the conferencing service to their customers, even those on wireless networks using 3G, 4G or the forthcoming LTE (long-term evolution), Vidyo says.

SVC improves videoconference image quality by reducing latency and the packet loss that can cause images to break up on traditional networks. SVC adjusts the resolution and bit rate to the end device, making the image clear to all participants.

Vidyo calls itself the first company to bring SVC videoconferencing to market, and last month the company announced a partnership with Hewlett-Packard in which HP will begin selling videoconferencing systems using Vidyo's software.

At the same time, Polycom, a longtime leader in videoconferencing based on the MCU standard, announced on Nov. 17 that it would be adopting the SVC standard next year, doing so in a partnership with Microsoft to integrate the Polycom HDX series telepresence systems for videoconferencing into Microsoft's Lync Server 2010. Lync is the new name for Microsoft's Office Communications Server, which is part of its Unified Communications platform for communications and collaboration for businesses. Lync began shipping Dec. 1.

Vidyo's Hollander says that eventually other MCU vendors, such as Tandberg, now part of Cisco, will convert to the SVC standard. He also believes that, in addition to KDDI in Japan, carriers in the United States will soon begin offering videoconference services based on SVC. He adds, however, that enterprises can choose to run an on-premise SVC-based system themselves.