Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 12 November 2008 12:31
Science -
Energy
Page 1 of 2
Hands up all those dissatisfied with conventional teleconferencing
systems. Keep your hand up if you've had the chance to try HP's Halo
system and are still not happy. What, nobody?
Most teleconferencing systems suffer from one or more shortcomings. Fairly ordinary video quality in terms of resolution, frame rates and even dropped frames. Average sound, sometimes with poor synchronisation and even a degree of feedback. Inconvenient user interfaces. The list goes on.
One way to overcome these issues is to think about what's actually needed, provide hardware and pipes that can actually do the job, and move from the idea of teleconferencing as a product to a fully managed solution.
And that's what HP has done with Halo.
The experience provided by the six-seat Halo Collaboration Studio is remarkably close to talking to people across the table, to the extent that the term 'telepresence' really seems justified.
This is partly the result of the company managing the entire meeting room build, so furniture and other surfaces match across locations.
High quality AV gear helps, of course. A Studio setup includes three HD screens and cameras for the videoconferencing side, plus a collaboration screen to share a computer display or images from the overhead camera mounted in each room for a high-res view of documents or physical objects.
The secret is in the network - see
page 2.
