HP is venturing further into the high-definition videoconferencing market for the purposes of business collaboration by introducing three new products it calls HP Visual Collaboration. HP's products are based on scalable video coding (SVC) technology from Vidyo Inc., which we reviewed in March, 2010, that enhances videoconferencing regardless of network bandwidth or the end point video display.
There are three versions of the product: HP Visual Collaboration Desktop, which runs on any desktop or laptop computer, thus connecting people at distant offices or home offices; Visual Collaboration Executive Desktop, which runs on an HP TouchSmart 600 Quad computer and is dedicated solely to video conferencing; and Visual Collaboration Room, that would be installed in a conference room or video conference studio where several people could participate in one location.
The SVC technology can deliver a video conference experience over a conventional corporate network or the Internet and using a variety of display devices including computer monitors, TVs or "immersive" studios such as HP's Halo system. The SVC technology also adjusts for different video specifications, said Marcio Macedo, director of product management for HP Virtual Collaboration.
"What's meaningful in the HP video collaboration is how we tie it all together with our infrastructure to make sure that each device connecting to the call has the ability to select their own resolution and frame rate, depending on what type of device it is and what type of bandwidth they have," Macedo said.
The system was demonstrated for reporters at HP offices in Cupertino, Calif., last week, connecting to HP employees in Oregon and Texas. The image of large-screen TVs could be split, with the use of a TV remote, so that people in all three locations could be seen at the same time and PowerPoint slides could appear as well.
