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Lifesize and Radvision hook up soldiers, NFL stars via HD videoconferencing
The Navy's not the only one getting a special taste of the Super Bowl, the U.S. Army is teaming with LifeSize and Radvision to let NFL legends send real time greetings to soldiers at Fort Lewis, Washington. The video calls will use Lifesize's HD videoconferencing technology and Radvision's networking to let the stars and troops feel as though they're in the same rom , despite being many miles apart. We haven't checked our maps, but hopefully Fort Washington's got the necessary OTA coverage and/or necessary cable/satellite agreements to make sure they get the game in HD too.
LifeSize unveils low-cost HD video-conferencing solutions
The corporate videoconferencing market has taken some baby steps towards HD resolutions, but a company called LifeSize is trying to jump the rest of the pack with an array of 720p devices that sell for much lower prices than anything else we've seen. The company's basic solution, the $5,999 LifeSize Express, comes with a microphone, remote, and 720p camera, and features HDMI input and output to pipe additional content over a 1.5mbps connection. Stepping up, the LifeSize Team MP and LifeSize Room add support for more than two participants, with the $8,999 Team MP supporting 4-point single camera communications over a 2.5mbps connection and the Room bumping the specs to 6 points with two cameras and two screens each over 5mbps. Linking two MPs and a Room together in what LifeSize bundles as a turnkey telepresence solution will set you back around $40K, which sounds steep until you compare it to competing $200K SD-res systems on the market. All these are shipping now, according to the company.[Via ZDNet, thanks James]
Giraffe video conferencing robot to weird employees out
So your boss is home sick today, huh? On a business trip you say? Think twice. Thanks to HeadThere's new developments in Giraffe video conferencing robots, people can literally be in two places at once (and will look extremely creepy in one of those places). The 5-foot, 8-inch-tall Giraffe robot presents an awkward alternative to traditional video conferencing by creating an actual physical presence -- it even adjusts to a 4-foot, 5-inch height in case you interact with someone who's seated. Using special software and a webcam, the user can operate their robotic representative from a remote location: you can tilt the head, er, 14.1-inch LCD screen up and down and maneuver the robot about the office, while taking in sights and sounds with a 2.1-megapixel, 8x zoom camera and microphone. You definitely won't be shuffling through papers or sipping free coffee, however, you'd be able to chat with / micromanage your employees and coworkers thanks to a high-volume speaker placed appropriately where a mouth would be. Now word yet on availability, but we do know that one robo-doppelganger will run you somewhere between $1,800 and $3,000 (those pre-ordering will receive a discount).[Via Crave]
Skype hack enables higher resolution video calls
The majority of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's vision of the future from 2001: A Space Odyssey has not yet been realized: popping over to the moon to have a look at the most recently unearthed alien artifact is not a common practice in the late-noughties, although one technology demonstrated in a minor scene of this science fiction epic has caught on. Video calling, once the preserve of video phones owners with expensive ISDN lines, has now become a day-to-day activity thanks to cheap broadband and a multitude of platforms that have made video chatting easy and affordable. Unfortunately, due to a variety of limitations -- lack of bandwidth, slow computers, poor quality webcams -- the majority of video conferencing solutions are of the 320 x 240 / 15 fps ilk: not something we want to hear in the era of HD. For those that do have sufficient bandwidth, a fast enough computer, and a capable webcam, there's an experimental hack for Skype that allows you to increase the resolution from the ancient 320 x 240 standard up to a much more tolerable 640 x 480. The hack only works one way, so users on both ends will have to apply it in order to see each other's zits with increased clarity. If we had a way of routing live high definition video through our PC, we'd attempt to increase the resolution even further, although that would of course require the help of something we've always found it hard to acquire: friends.[Via MAKE]Read - PCRead - Mac
Apple patent embeds thousands of cameras among LCD pixels
Oh Barry Fox, does a week ever go by when you don't find a great patent or two? Today the intrepid Mr. Fox manages to dig up an application by consumer-darling Apple for an LCD display embedded with thousands of microscopic image sensors that would allow users to video-conference while looking straight into the "camera." Data accumulated by the individual sensors would be stitched into actual images using special software, which will probably be bundled into future versions of iLife. Since the patent specifies almost as many sensors per screen as there are pixels, some of those sensors could have different focal lengths, with a defacto zoom lens created by switching between them. Apple goes on to suggest portable uses for the technology, such as employing the displays in cellphones and PDAs, so you can add another item to the list of features we'll be expecting from the iPhone and Newton 2.0 when they finally hit stores.[Via New Scientist]
