Videoconferencing to the masses: H.323 standard is shrinking the cost and size of systems

Since the unveiling of Western Electric's picturephone in the 1960s, a number of companies have attempted to merge video with traditional telephone functions. But until very recently, the solution was a room-based system that started at around $20,000 and required all participants to go to a specific location. However, the ratification of the H.323 standards by the ITU-T is doing for videoconferencing what the World Wide Web did for the Internet.

A variety of vendors are beginning to flood the market with products that allow users to videoconference right from their desktops. Additionally, the systems and infrastructure to support the application are about 10% of the price of traditional room systems.

"The world of conferencing has just expanded many times over," said Dave Desjardins, product line director for VideoServer, which unveiled an H.323 bridge at last week's TeleCon show (see figure).

The Encounter line, which includes a NetServer and a NetGate, lets users interconnect with other videoconference callers over Internet protocol networks such as the Internet. The system also includes the ability to collaborate through a data stream that conforms to the ITU-T T.120 standard.

"We want to be able to give any endpoint the ability to use our server," said Desjardins. Initially, the company is targeting Internet service providers that can use the system as an enticement for larger corporate clients.

However, the solidification of H.323 also is allowing PBX vendors to look at videoconferencing as a natural extension. NEC, for one, has teamed with MMA Corp. to build an H.323-based desktop video system. The View Point VDX accommodates videoconferencing on any PC regardless of connection speeds, though with slower dial-up connections the quality diminishes. "If I'm at my house and I have it on a POTS line, it's around seven to 12 frames per second," said Philip Carter, product marketing manager for NEC. (Higher-end room systems based on the ITU-T H.320 standard typically transmit 22 to 30 frames per second.)

The MMA/NEC consortium built the system to allow for maximum flexibility because users will want different quality video depending on their specific applications, said Dave Boomstein, vice president of business development for MMA. "We want the MIS manager to be asking, 'What is the quality of service that I need to provide for the application?' That's very different from what the videoconferencing industry has done so far, which has been to go the lowest common denominator."

Recognizing that many applications will require higher-quality video, some vendors are aiming products for the middle market H.323 desktops and H.320 room systems. VideoLAN's system, for example, uses the two unused copper pairs that were specified in many office wiring schemes. The result is a system that produces broadcast-quality video using 2 Mbytes of RAM and 2 Mbytes of hard drive space on the user's PC, said Mark Scott, vice president of product development.

"Rather than trying to force your data network to provide video, what we're doing is allowing those video applications alongside the LAN," he said. Video in the VideoLAN architecture is split off before it hits the office PBX and then gets routed to a server, which can be connected with other servers across a metropolitan area or wide area network.

"There are many aspects of business that requires a greater quality video," Scott said. "Our focus is to add more business value to that video communication."

Still, the company recognizes that H.323 will increase the potential market and is planning to add an H.323 interface to its system.

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