VideoCentric First to Achieve RADVision Accreditation for New Scopia HD MCU

Telepresence and Holography / Holograms - November 2008

Editor’s viewpoint on their differences, likenesses and future...

We all just recently viewed an historic CNN holographic interview on an historic Election Night. CNN stated this type of imaging has never been done before on National TV and I believe that. I haven’t seen anything like it. The live interview caught me by surprise and sure had the “wow” factor attached to it didn’t it? Here’s a link to the actual interview.

CNN Hologram Video

The question now has to be asked. Is it Telepresence?

I’m no expert on the subject but I’m going to throw my hat into the ring, go out on a limb and say yes, I believe it is. Although I know many video conferencing purists are rolling their eyes and grabbing their guns right about now with my statement.

While I do know that Telepresence still hasn’t been universally defined (Houston, we have a problem), here’s how I see it…. Broken down to its simplest form - “tele” (through electronic means) and “presence” (present). This is how I’m justifying my opinion by lumping holography and Telepresence together. Just as Telepresence is surely an offshoot of video conferencing, holographic imaging (like we viewed on CNN) surely has to be considered an offshoot of Telepresence. The interviewer was “telepresent” from Chicago and beamed into the CNN Election Headquarters. She was most assuredly - “telepresent”. There was negligible latency, the imaging was fantastic and both interviewers were rehearsed on what they would say. I’ve just recently read that CNN actually “downgraded” the experience to make it “movie” quality and not as good as it could have been. Maybe they thought us mere mortals would be shocked if they showed their complete hand. I have a feeling it was so big to them, they didn’t want it to get upstaged by the historic election. I’m willing to bet we’ll see the “true” power of this technology in the upcoming weeks and months when they can put the pedal to the medal and show it off without having it sidetracked.

What an amazing time for this technology (all differences and opinions aside). Telepresence Doctors, nurses, teachers, schools and healthcare (healthpresence) will benefit from the recent gains in this state-of-the-art industry whether holograms, Telepresence or holography. Airlines also have to see the threat to a portion of their business travel. Hell, who wants go through security and fly to Miami for a two-hour conference when you can look them in the eye via Telepresence?

Beam me up Scotty! Simply amazing…!

Visit the free Telepresence Forum for more information and discussion

Your Editor and Administrator - L II
"Ride on the Next Plane of Existence" TM

London & Edinburgh (PRWEB) December 17, 2007 -- VideoCentric is the first UK integrator to be granted full accreditation to sell the new range of Scopia servers by RADVision, manufacturers of the world's leading multipoint conferencing bridges (MCUs) and Gateways for H.323, SIP and 3G networks.

Announced in November, the new entry-level Scopia 50 MCU supports HD & SD videoconferencing up to 6-ports, and ships in a 1U high chassis, complete with iView software suite for MS Windows. The software package includes a full ECS Gatekeeper for up to 25-registrations, Conference Management, Scheduling & Video Broadcasting capabilities. The icing on the cake is that 12 concurrent desktop video clients are also included which means that professional videoconference users can invite each other to participate in a conference over the internet, simply by emailing each other and clicking on a hyperlink. Unlike traditional H.323 desktop videoconferencing systems, no software installation is required at each endpoint and none of the problems associated with firewall traversal will occur. This is all handled by the software on the central Scopia server and by the email invitations sent to potential users who need nothing more than a USB web cam to connect. Audio-only conferencing is also supported for those requiring voice-over-IP bridging capability.

The 6-port model is launched at a price much below its HD competitors and comes from endpoint independent manufacturer RADVision, the world's leading manufacturer of gateways and MCUs for the last 10 years. RADVision also manufacture such hardware for Cisco and licence their core H.323 software stack, to many of the other manufacturers in the video conferencing industry worldwide.

VideoCentric has already taken delivery of the new generation MCU for instant demonstrations to end-users across England and Wales and for HD & SD connectivity from its new demonstration sites in Edinburgh and Ayr. For potential users in East & West Scotland, a series of seminars is being planned for early 2008 and a full range of maintenance programmes, installation, training and consultancy services are already in place.

David Shimell, Sales Director for VideoCentric, said, "we work with all the leading MCU and end-point manufacturers and run many interoperability tests between them and while the cost of HD endpoints has reduced dramatically, we have been waiting for an affordable range of HD-MCUs to offer our customers, particularly those with just a handful of sites. At less than £9,995, the entry level RADVision HD unit will excite small to medium sized businesses looking to make visual contact with customers and suppliers on an ad-hoc basis. Buyers of the Scopia will be able to freely give away the Scopia desktop VC client to anyone they may want to have a videoconference with. There is no need for the recipient to have a VC budget or for any prior software installation on a PC, you just click on the emailed link and communication through firewalls and across the public internet occurs. It opens up many new applications for v-mail marketing, customer help desks, recruitment and other agencies as well as interactive web sites".

About VideoCentric

VideoCentric is an integrator & reseller of the world's leading video conferencing and streaming products from RADVision, Codian, Polycom, Tandberg, Emblaze-VCON, Lifesize, SONY & Canon. Headquartered in the Thames Valley, England, with satellite sites in Edinburgh and Ayr Scotland, VideoCentric markets its products and services primarily in the UK but has also formed associations with other Companies worldwide to facilitate the global supply and support of major corporations and system integrators, including those of Cisco, Avaya, Mitel, IBM and Nortel. VideoCentric's bandwidth services include the supply of ISDN, ADSL, ADSL-Max, SDSL and uncontended leased lines for video and voice over IP, and their other value added services include free demonstrations, long-term rental, short-term hire, installation, maintenance, training, managed multipoint and 24x7 video dial-in support. For more information, visit www.videocentric.co.uk or telephone 0118 974 0125 (England/Wales) or 0131 473 2351 (Scotland).

About RADVision

RADVISION (Nasdaq: RVSN) is the industry's leading provider of market-proven products and technologies for unified visual communications over IP and 3G networks. With its complete set of standards-based video networking infrastructure and developer toolkits for voice, video, data and wireless communications, RADVISION is driving the unified communications evolution by combining the power of video, voice, data and wireless - for high definition video conferencing systems, innovative converged mobile services, and highly scalable video-enabled desktop platforms on IP, 3G and emerging next-generation IMS networks. For more information about RADVISION, visit www.radvision.com.

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