Polycom V500 Product Review

[Morgan81]

Just wanted to share my first impressions of the Polycom V500 running 5.5 software.
-Right off the bat it would be nice if the interface remained the same from the Viewstation line. I know how bad my clients will hate it if they are forced to change what they see (eventhough I like this design much better).
-You can customize the look of the interface (colors, speed dial, what information is shown).
-No camera control. What's up with that??? Even the Tandberg 1000's camera can A small motor couldn't of taken up that much room.
-H.264 is only between other Polycoms (I'm pretty sure, I know it doesn't work between this and my Tandberg 880).
-Audio quality is excellent. Thankfully the mics are mounted on the unit so you don't have any wires laying around and they do an excellent job of picking up faint voices even in an enivornment with a good deal of backround noise.
-Dual monitor emulation, this may have been offered on other units but this is the first time I've seen it and it is much better then the standard PIP. You can change it from equal image side by side to one main shot with thumbnails to the right.

I've just started playing around with this, but overall I think it's a pretty robust little codec, however, there are a lot of features that the average user (especially since this is geared to the VIP) will never need or want (ie a banner message that scrolls across your screen instead of a dialing pad, which when turned on, you cannot type in any numbers, you can only dial what's in your directory.

My gut feelings are if you have a small network, run a lot of IP calls and use primarily Polycoms, this system would be fantastic. But, if you're like me, and have a HUGE network, run strictly ISDN calls and are approximatly 95% Tandberg (plus we have TMS deployed globally, which cannot support this codec as of TMS v8.0) then the Tandberg 1000 is a no-brainer, even if this is a little cheaper.

I'll let you know if my feelings change, but one man's trash is another's treasure so it could be perfect for some of you.

[Morgan81]

Here's the link to all of Polycom's documentation for this.

http://www.polycom.com/resource_center/0,1...83-6575,FF.html (http://www.polycom.com/resource_center/0,1454,pw-26-483-6575,FF.html)

[MACC the AVCOtek]

Originally posted by Morgan81@Jun 18 2004, 07:23 PM
-No camera control. What's up with that??? Even the Tandberg 1000's camera can
What I remember about the Tandberg 1000 'camera control' is that it's totally digital. You're not actually moving the camera around. And you have to be zoomed in a bit to get it to work. Still and all, it's more than the manual thing the 500 has.... :)

[Culver]

Dispite not having the VSX prefix, thats exactly what this is. From the interface alone, the V500 is a VSX system. All the options that are in the VSX7000 are present.

The camera is a bit of a disapointment, though to be fair the image is sharp and clear. Not sure that Polycom are pitching this unit correctly. The idea of this being a Small Group system with a fixed camera goes against what we normally promote in this range (ie the SPs). But the camera has a fairly wide angle and it is easy to fit three people on screen in good focus. It is a bit of a puzzle why they didn't go for some sort of digital ptz (maybe some of the old PTEL guys brought out the old SwiftSite II with the digital camera, and Polycom decided not to make the same mistake), as the tech is better and surely cheaper than it was back in 1998. However all that said, for 1 - 3 people the set-up should be fine.

The remote control is similar to that of the VSX with some notable changes. They have removed all the camera controls so as not to confuse users (however it does mean no FECC). And as a bonus surprise they have a seperate hang up button (should of thought of than on the iPower 9000, but never mind).

Now the bit I didn't expect. Place a call to another VSX or V500 and the image and soud quality are superb. The in-built microphone does a great job. I was sat almost 2 metres away from the system and it picked me up with no noisy background hiss.

As mentioned above, the dual monitor emulation works as on the VSX. Even beter, the unit is quite happy to receive images from the Visual Concert, so you can have the far end presentation, far end video and near end video on the screen at the same time. Not bad for the baby of the family. And as with the VSX, by pressing the PIP button you can choose which of these images you want full screen.

One fact that is worth noting is that this call was placed over ADSL and was more than acceptable. Will update once I get back into the office and try higher bandwidth and ISDN.

Overall, for Small Office/Home Office when sending presentations isn't a requirement then the unit is perfect. I'd personally consider this to be the kiss of death to the SP128 as the H.264 video quality and price point for IP calls make this a no brainer.

I do need to test to other units (Tandberg, Sony) to see how the system behaves, but if you are a Polycom house a low cost option has just opened to you.

[Kevin]

They have removed all the camera controls so as not to confuse users (however it does mean no FECC)

Thats a shame - I assume you mean it does not do FECC in either direction if the buttons are not on the remote?

I wonder if you use a VSX7000 remote if FECC will suddenly work... ;)

[cmacgfmt]

We have a V500 and I think the quality is really quite good for the price.
Hopefully future releases will include FECC

[Culver]

Odd. What version software are you running? Ours is 5.5, but in a call, if you press the arrow keys, you just get a message saying that Near End control is not available. I have tried both on IP and ISDN and both are the same. Let me know what your using. The only thing different is that I tested the FECC while conected to an iPower rather than to the 7000. even so if the 500 is standards based, it should work.

As a note to Kevin, nice idea but the VSX remote does not work at all with the V500. Add another order to the spares dept.

Also have tested with iPower 9000 v6. People and Content works fine (considering there is no xga on the 500). Again video and audio quality is excellent.

[trapehzoid]

-No camera control. What's up with that??? Even the Tandberg 1000's camera can A small motor couldn't of taken up that much room.

Cost vs space.. I'm sure.

-H.264 is only between other Polycoms (I'm pretty sure, I know it doesn't work between this and my Tandberg 880).

That's because the VSX line is still polycom's propritary H264 implementation. I expect this to change soon tho.


I've just started playing around with this, but overall I think it's a pretty robust little codec, however, there are a lot of features that the average user (especially since this is geared to the VIP) will never need or want (ie a banner message that scrolls across your screen instead of a dialing pad, which when turned on, you cannot type in any numbers, you can only dial what's in your directory.


Thats because this unit isn't aimed at the usual VC user. This unit is all about 'commodity' VC in the home.. stand-alone SOHO kind of stuff. No brains.. just picture and audio. I wouldn't expect to be doing a comparison between this unit and a more traditional VTC unit.

I hope polycom starts introducing real management interfaces into the VSX platform soon. I don't know how AT&T and other service providers will be able to deploy in large masses without it.

[Skylark]

On the V500 remote you can´t Zoom in&out on FarEnd and what is worse is that remote doesn't have FarEnd button so if you where to press the NearEnd button during a call the only whay I could find to view the FarEnd again was to reconnect the call.

So I did as you suggested, used a VSX 7000 remote on V500 and call a VSX7000 unit.
The VSX remote does work with the V500 unit and it works very well.

FarEnd and NearEnd buttons worked fine and I could go back and forth.
When I set the remote to FarEnd camera controle I could both move the camera around, zoom in , Zoom out and preset.

I think its a bit strange that they changed the remote because if you look at the VSX3000 you can see thay have all the cameracontrol buttons there but the camera is the same as in V500.

[midair77]

Hi, everybody. I am extremely new to this video conferencing area. I would like to ask if it is possible to use Polycom V500 with anything thing like MSN Messenger or MS Net Meeting.

Another question is that since our Polycom V500 is IP only, so our unit can talk to those that not IP-based (like ISDN based)?

Thanks for your help.
Steven.

[Glen Sykes]

See reply in IP Telephony Forum.

It's a good idea not to post the same question in 2 forums, as you could end up with a real messy response.

Glen

[Skylark]

Two things:

v500 remote may have a fewer buttons but it does work on other VSX units and you can use VSX7000 remote to zoom in and out on farend units connected to the v500

If you whant you can set the v500 up with Viewstation skin if your customers are used to the old systems