InfoComm '04, What I remember..

[Gary Miyakawa]

Geezz.. This is a BIG show ! Funny, right off the bad I'm in a session with Tom ! Hey Tom !

One thing to consider about this show for the future. 2 of the four "Show sponsors" (Highest level of sponsorship possible) are Video Conferencing companies (Polycom and Tandberg). That should tell you how much importance THEY are putting on this show.

Things that I remember (and will get more information for tomorrow)....

Vaddio - Rob Sheeley and crew have done it again. Camera's that drop from the side wall or from the ceiling ! It was excellent !

Crestron - Too much to list... Lots of new touch panels.

Extron - Motorized table top access enclosures and much more.

Tandberg - (you probably read the Press Release about their BIG MCU).. I'll see more tomorrow. Tony I. is going to run me around the booth.

Polycom - Not too much "new", just first public showings of the V500 (looks really good and is smaller than you would think). I guess my wife was right, Size doesn't matter. :ph34r:

Sony - Going back tomorrow for a full show.

Scotty - (anyone ever heard of them, other than me !?).. They've got some new goodies. I'll get pictures and stuff tomorrow.

Aethra - Didn't get there yet.

Vcon - Didn't get there yet.

Codian - Yeah, those guys are there and they've been HIDING something from us ! They've come up with a device that will record video calls (Direct record or record between two systems). It records to an embedded harddrive and then you can tap into it for video on demand. No big deal, right ? Welp, when was the last time you used a Polycom ViewStation or Tandberg T1000 to watch an on demand recorded session ??? NEVER !! This is really cool and I'm trying to talk Mark and folks to put one online as soon as possible for us to play with. They expect release in the August (2004) timeframe if I remember correctly. I'm going back by tomorrow for more pictures and good stuff !

Thats all my little brain can remember as of now... Please Tom and anyone else that was there, pipe up and give us your impressions.

For me, it was a great "old home" week seeing many of my friends and peers.

I handed out 30 VTCTalk cards today and there seemed to be a lot of interest.

AND, I even had one vendor tell me we were doing a great job with the site !! YEAHAAA !!!

Anyway, Folks at the show, please give me a call when you can (9am-5pm - 770-329-0572) Thursday so I can get you some of the "goodies" that George sent down !

Gary Miyakawa

[tom9933]

As Gary said the show this year seems extremely large! I put in a full day and at this point I’m probably only a third of the way through the show (to much gabbing with the vendors). I’ll also try to post a few of the highlights from the companies I talked with today:
1) Codian- as Gary said the new streaming/recording device that these guys are talking about is very impressive. I have to say the more I talk with the guys from Codian the more I’m impressed. Basically the box has most of the goodies we’ve come to like on their MCU with the addition of conference recording/playback/streaming. I don’t remember all the specs but basically the box is going to come in 1, 5, and 10 port recording configurations (similar to Starbak). Pricing was still up in the air but it’s sounded very competitive. BTW here is a link to the pdf about the product: http://www.codian.com/documents/IPVCR2200-Datasheet.pdf
2) VCON- I also spent quite a bit of time with the folks at the VCON booth. Now at the time they were having some problems with their USB cameras so I didn’t get to see a full demo of the new (H.264 capable) software client but it looks just like the current client. I also spent a little bit of time with the 3000 and 5000 units that were in the booth. Now it’s always hard to compare systems at a show but the video looked pretty good on both of the units. I’m supposed to be getting a pair to try in-house so hopefully more to come.
3) Radvision- I didn’t spend a lot of time in the booth, but I did get a chance to see the new software client. Basically I’d say the quality of the video on this client seems comparable to the current (non-H.264) VCON client. While the interface is definitely different I think comparisons between the two clients will most likely be won on the financial side.
4) 3 touch- This is a very interesting company from the UK that has some potentially very hot products. They call the company 3touch because their idea is that you should need to make 3 touches to perform a task. Now while this makes there products seem very simple to the user in actually there seems to be a lot going on behind the scenes. My initial understanding of the product suite is that they are trying to build a presentation management system. However the more we talked with these guys the more options seemed to come up. In a nutshell the system they showed involved putting a networked (wired or wireless) box at each display. This allowed their server to send content through the network to any connected display. Now in the display they had it setup to upload the content directly to the server. With the content on their server you can then run your presentation from either a standard pc or pocket pc. In this mode the computer/handheld basically acts as a remote control for the presentation. However, it also seems like they have the ability to pull content directly from a pc running a specific client. Like I said seems like something worth looking into when I get home from the show. BTW they can also support web clients.
Also I can’t forget to mention that Extron put on another great bash tonight! Thanks guys and hello Gary :D

[George]

Thanks for the run-down guys! It's almost like being there!

I'm always interested in interviews as I plan to integrate those into the ever growing wealth of information available here on VTCTalk. If you run accross any vendors or company reps that would be interested in granting us an interview about their company, products, services, and future innovations, I'd be highly interested. Doesn't have to be an on teh spot thing. Maybe just a card exchange and possible time frame to get back to them with our questions list.

I prefer to conduct the interviews via prepared written questions as that method is easiest to transcribe to a web medium.

As for Scotty, I've actually worked with 1 or 2 of their Scotty Mobile devices at deployed sites. We had a little trouble getting them to go secure using a KIV-7 but eventually worked it out. They're ISDN capable and we connected via a single 64k channel mrsat sattelite ****. Pretty durable little devices. It's basically a portable PC device running Windows with a soft video CODEC.

Again thanks for the info guys, and keep it coming. We're starving for details back here!

[Entropy3XD]

I am so envious of you guys down at the show. :(

[Kevin]

For those of us that can't make there all is not lost...

Glowpoint have dialed into our demo unit we have on the internet from their booth - call in and you'll be able to take a look around at the show!!

To call, Just call in using its IP (64.71.128.186) to enter its Auto-attendant, then set your endpoint to Far End camera control. Use up and down to highlight the conference you want to join and then use right to join it.

Alternatively once in the Auto-attendant you can dial DTMFs to either create a new conference or join one that is already created (dial 333# to join the vtctalk chat conference).

The glowpoint endpoint should be in the vtctalk conference - if its not there try back later - or you could even try calling out to it from the web interface of our MCU (http://demo.codian.com - password and username are both vtctalk)

For further details how use it look in these postings:

http://www.vtctalk.com/index.php?showtopic...=findpost&p=794 (http://www.vtctalk.com/index.php?showtopic=144&view=findpost&p=794)

http://www.vtctalk.com/index.php?showtopic=165

[Skylark]

Thx Kevin I think you found a new way to torture people,
thats like pressing your face up agains the window to a candy factory!

[George]

Excellent Kevin. I'm sure our fellow vtctalkers will put it to good use!

[vtjoe]

Kevin,

I'm foaming at the mouth over the new IP VCR - if your data sheet is correct, your product rocks.

1) From the data sheet what are "H.323 playback ports"?

2) "Support for 3rd party streaming servers (eg Apple)" what about Windows and Real streaming servers?

[tom9933]

vtjoe, I believe the H.323 playback ports are the number of users that can watch using a H.323 endpoint. On the single port model I remember the guys saying that 5 H.323 clients could watch a stream at once. I don’t remember the answer to the other question although I’m pretty sure someone (maybe me, lol) asked it while I was there.
Ok guys here are the updates from today’s touring. As I said yesterday this show is very large and things tend to run together even on the night of.
Tandberg- Now I didn’t spend a huge amount of time at the booth, but I did talk for quite a while with a very large user that I know. Basically his complaint was that even though they have announced several new things in the recent press release, most of them are far from shipment. I tried to get some clarification at the booth but didn’t have a lot of time to wait for the appropriate guy. I was told that the new MPS unit at the show was not functional. Personally I’m happy to hear that Tandberg is moving in the right direction, but I also hate to see press releases about vaporware.
Envivio- This is the product that I posted the link about earlier and they had a very nice booth at the show. Basically the product performs very similar to the mediasite live from sonic foundry but there are a few specific differences. The biggest difference is that in the envivio version the entire presentation (audio, video and content) is archived as one MPEG4 file. Basically they tell me that each video stream is built inside of the main stream and you could in theory have an unlimited number of video steams. What this means for us is that the motion on the content stream is actually a low frame rate stream rather than a bunch of individually indexed JPEGs. Motion is noticeably better and the capture capability is up to 1600*1200 on the larger box and 1024*768 on the basic box. As I recall the basic box (think appliance) starts at about 15k and the larger box (server with large array) is about 30k. The other big advantage about the single file approach is that the file can be played in almost any MPEG4 compatible player. Basically they add a plug-in to the player and I’m told that files can even be played within Internet Explorer. They sent me off with a cd of content and from what I can tell the files look very good. The bit rates are a bit high for streaming, but for archival on a cd or playback over the lan they would be very acceptable. BTW another benefit of the format is that you can make any of the streams full screen at the client level. I would be happy to upload the cd if someone would like to view it (~240 MB).
Sony- The executive codec at the show looked relatively good but once again it was very hard to judge the quality of the video. The size of the monitor (20” I think) seems very nice and the case has sleek look. Overall the quality seemed on par with the other Sony codecs I’ve seen and the exterior appearance was very appealing.
I also spent quite a bit of time looking at the new 3chip PTZ camera. Basically this camera uses the same controller and codes as the EVI line but the image quality is much higher. Basically the camera supports 4*3 or 16*9 and outputs everything from composite to SDI. They even have optional fiber and fire wire cards. Basically the camera has one card slot and they make an additional brick that acts as a fiber receiver and has two slots. So you put a fiber card in the camera and hookup the brick with fiber (distance ~3km as I recall). The brick then allows you to put two different output cards in it. While this camera may be considered overkill for VC it’s definitely a hot item for industrial production market. A package with one camera, the controller and a brick should be under 10k.
Sony also showed a very nice HD camera that was around 22k with an 18x lens. It also had the fiber capabilities and they were showing it with a non-Sony (Pro 4, I think) robotic head.
Well a bit more time at the show tomorrow and then it’s a trip home for me. The show is supposed to be in Vegas next year so mark your calendars.

[Kevin]

vtjoe - Glad you like the look of it! :D

To answer your questions:

1) From the data sheet what are "H.323 playback ports"?

2) "Support for 3rd party streaming servers (eg Apple)" what about Windows and Real streaming servers?

1. As Tom said - You can watch recordings (and these can be different recordings played back at different bitrates etc) with 5, 10 or 20 H323 endpoints concurrently depending on the model of IP VCR.

You can call into the IP VCR with a H323 endpoint, and much like our MCU's Auto Attendant you can use far end camera control to navigate a menu of recordings to choose which one to watch. If recordings are registered with a gatekeeper you can just call their DN directly.

2. I believe they will be supported too. Out of interest which streaming servers do you guys tend to use?

Also, the recordings can be copied off the unit to be archived, burned or streamed from elsewhere.

Hope this clears it up for you!
Kevin

[vtjoe]

Originally posted by Kevin@Jun 11 2004, 08:34 AM

2. I believe they will be supported too. Out of interest which streaming servers do you guys tend to use?


Windows Media Services 9 Series and Real Networks Helix server.

Thanks for the response.

What's the list price?

[mazzarak]

A very specific question I know, but did anyone see a demo of the next version of GMS by Polycom? Or am I getting ahead of myself?

[Kevin]

vtjoe

What's the list price?

Pricing is still to be firmed up, though the single recording port version will list for less that $10k.

How many should I put you down for? :D

[Gary Miyakawa]

Originally posted by mazzarak@Jun 14 2004, 12:20 PM
A very specific question I know, but did anyone see a demo of the next version of GMS by Polycom? Or am I getting ahead of myself?
I played with GMS in the Polycom Booth but didn't really notice anything really new in it... What were you looking for ?

Gary Miyakawa

[tom9933]

Unfortunately, I didn’t see or hear anything about the next version of GMS. However I did finally get some time on Friday to talk with the Tandberg folks. The new version of TMS (9) looks very good and in comparison to my current version of GMS I was very impressed. They have H.350 import and export capabilities and they say the integration with non-Tandberg equipment is much better in this release. The shipping date for all the new stuff is supposed to be in early July so things are much better than I originally heard.
They had a demo (flashing lights only) MPS box and the feature set sounded very good, but Ill wait until I see a working model. BTW they may have had a working model in the NDA booth but I didn’t get to go.

[mazzarak]

well its one of those things - response and counter response between Polycom and Tandberg. Tandberg got the call scheduling thing licked, and Polycom, I can only presume, will have this covered in the next release.

We have been trialling GMS and TMS, and TMS currently wins by KO in the first, but to go with TMS is to underestimate the next GMS. And so it goes round and round.

Gary, did you notice if you can schedule calls on the new GMS? Or can you do this on the current version, and I'm doing a poor Mr Magoo impression?

[Gary Miyakawa]

GMS doesn't have call scheduling. Polycom sells a product called PCS that DOES do scheduling (point to point, Multipoint using embedded in endbpoint and Multipoint using MGCs)...

I'm sure neither Polycom or Tandberg is standing still on this and must be creating something new. and as with all technology products, one company comes out with something "new" and in a while, another company leap frogs them with something even newer. I don't know what that might be but having been in this industry for MANY (darn, I'm old) years, I've seen it over and over.

So, as with all companies... Don't like something, wait a little while, something newer/better/different will come along (example is Codian)...

Hope that helps a bit.

Gary Miyakawa

[mazzarak]

definitely - thanks Gary. That fills in a couple of blanks on the Polycom front.

:)

[vtjoe]

GMS and TMS -
What are the current platforms? Windows 2000 or 2003

TMS 8 was 2000 - I'm assuming TMS 9 is 2003.

[robertk]

Tandberg claim to have rewritten the TMS-code for the .NET platform, so I assume they also made sure it works under win 2003...

//Robert

[Sean Lessman]

They had a demo (flashing lights only) MPS box and the feature set sounded very good, but Ill wait until I see a working model. BTW they may have had a working model in the NDA booth but I didn’t get to go.

Tom, actually the MPS was in a call for most of the 3 day show. If you were looking at the MCU, off to the right was a TANDBERG 880 in a call with some codecs with DVD players attached. It was much more than a blinking light demo! You should have stopped by the booth, I would have been happy to show you around.

Sean

[Sean Lessman]

GMS and TMS -
What are the current platforms? Windows 2000 or 2003

TMS 8 was 2000 - I'm assuming TMS 9 is 2003.

Correct, TMS 9 supports Server 2003 and is .NET .

Sean

[tom9933]

Sean,
Sorry I didn’t find you; things were pretty busy at your booth when I was there. It sounds like there was some confusion about the capabilities of the MPS box. On my first visit I didn’t really get to talk with anyone and on my second visit the guy talking about the box told a defense contractor and I that the box was only in demo mode. The guy seemed to know quite a bit about the box but he also shuffled us off to someone else to talk about TMS.
BTW great to see you posting in the forums :)

[Sean Lessman]

Sean,
Sorry I didn’t find you; things were pretty busy at your booth when I was there. It sounds like there was some confusion about the capabilities of the MPS box. On my first visit I didn’t really get to talk with anyone and on my second visit the guy talking about the box told a defense contractor and I that the box was only in demo mode. The guy seemed to know quite a bit about the box but he also shuffled us off to someone else to talk about TMS.
BTW great to see you posting in the forums :)

Hi Tom, its a shame, I would have liked to meet you. The person you spoke to must have been covering for me as I went to buy some overpriced hot dogs :-)

[tom9933]

Sean,
Yes I agree it would have been great to meet in person, maybe next time. Personally I tried to stay away from the $5 dogs. Instead I spent a lot of time at the CNN Center, there the dogs were only $3 :)

[EamonnRoarke]

Hi All,

I know I might be picking up this link a little late, but someone sent it to me. I'm one of the founders of 3Touch, (we from Ireland eh eh) not UK. Glad you liked the product. We have moved on significantly since Atlanta 2004. I guess you may have talked to me on the stand. Guess what we have added annotation, Control, conferencing tool and many other smart additions to the system since

Eamonn :banana:



4) 3 touch- This is a very interesting company from the UK that has some potentially very hot products. They call the company 3touch because their idea is that you should need to make 3 touches to perform a task. Now while this makes there products seem very simple to the user in actually there seems to be a lot going on behind the scenes. My initial understanding of the product suite is that they are trying to build a presentation management system. However the more we talked with these guys the more options seemed to come up. In a nutshell the system they showed involved putting a networked (wired or wireless) box at each display. This allowed their server to send content through the network to any connected display. Now in the display they had it setup to upload the content directly to the server. With the content on their server you can then run your presentation from either a standard pc or pocket pc. In this mode the computer/handheld basically acts as a remote control for the presentation. However, it also seems like they have the ability to pull content directly from a pc running a specific client. Like I said seems like something worth looking into when I get home from the show. BTW they can also support web clients.
Also I can’t forget to mention that Extron put on another great bash tonight! Thanks guys and hello Gary :D