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[Two weeks ago I posted the pre-show post, inviting you all, physically and/or virtually, to join RADVISION in InfoComm09. Well, the show is over, and the many significant announcements we made made a huge impact. And so I wanted to share with you some great videos that Teddy Flatau, AVP Products in the Networking Business Unit (NBU), took in our booth , using his Flip HD camera (remember?), accompanied by great commentary written by Bob Romano, VP Marketing NBU.]

At the cornerstone of RADVISION’s new announcements was the SCOPIA Elite MCU, a powerful new MCU built on a brand new ATCA architecture and utilizing advanced DSP technology to bring a new price-performance level to the market with uncompromised support for HD up to 1080p. We introduced 3 MCU models, supporting 10, 15 and 30 ports of HD calls, but with a variable capacity capability, that can accommodate up to 4 times that capacity when devices connect at less than HD – that’s up to 120 ports of SD calls.

The SCOPIA Elite compliments the existing SCOPIA 100 and 400 models, providing a full range of price points and performance options for customers. The SCOPIA Elite was demonstrated in InfoComm, showcasing a 1080p conference with a variety of the latest endpoints from the leading vendors connected. The quality was stunning.

Yaniv Levi, PM of Scopia MCU, showcases the SCOPIA Elite MCU.

Perhaps the most unexpected announcement and demonstration was made by RADVISION and Samsung, announcing a jointly developed HD desktop video device comprised of a Samsung high resolution 24 inch monitor, into which has been integrated a Hardware based HD conferencing system. With integrated HD camera, speakers, microphone and echo cancellation, it provides a complete stand-alone HD video conferencing system, that can also function as a PC monitor. And the market changing element of it is the price, just $1,999 - ¼ of comparable systems on the market, from the likes of Polycom and Tandberg. With Cisco and now Samsung (both RADVISION partners) jumping into the video conferencing market, things are sure to change.

Amir Zmora, VP Marketing of the TBU, showcases the VC240.

Technology meets the Desktop

On the technology front, we demonstrated our new Scalable Video Coding technology, providing unprecedented error resiliency in lossy networks. Using H.264/SVC multi-layered video streams, and by utilizing error correction and protection schemes on the base layer, RADVISION provides dramatically improved error resiliency, without the large overhead these schemes usually introduce. This was demonstrated by showing two SCOPIA Desktop 7.0 clients in a call together on a network segment that had generated 3% packet loss. One of the clients was utilizing our SVC technology, while the other was not. The difference in quality was night and day. After watching this demo you would not want to use anything but our SVC, especially on networks with loss, such as public Internet.

Bob Romano showing the SVC demo.

On the desktop front, RADVISION continued to extend its market lead with several enhancements to the SCOPIA Desktop line. Most impressive was a new directory that allows one click calling to other desktops and room systems. Desktop-to-desktop has media flow directly between desktops, while calling a room system goes through the MCU, ensuring uncompromised interoperability. What is unique in this solution is the ability to “escalate” a desktop-to-desktop call to a conference seamlessly. The user just adds more participants and the point-to-point call is transferred onto the MCU automatically, without any user intervention.

David Bundy, CTO Desktop Technologies, shows SCOPIA Desktop P2P capabilities.

Also on the desktop front, RADVISION demonstrated integration of HD video into the leading Unified Communications platforms. The demon showed 3 laptops connected together in a HD conference: One with Cisco’s WebEx, one with IBM’s Sametime and the other with Microsoft Communicator. The WebEx and Sametime clients had RADVISION’s desktop video client integrated into them, showing full 720p HD video. Microsoft Communicator connected using the native video capability of the Communicator.

Billy Smith, Director Pre-Sales Engineering, shows the IBM Sametime Integration.

This really demonstrated how RADVISION adds high quality HD video to the market leading UC platforms, and how the SCOPIA MCU can allow interoperability between all of these, including Microsoft’s OCS platform. The WebEx integration was particularly impressive since it is a new offering from Cisco.

Cisco WebEx with RADVISION’s desktop video client integrated.

Where we belong

Another notable demonstration was of our recording, streaming and playback capabilities using the SCOPIA platform. RADVISION has added HD recording and playback of both the video and the data shared. This recording can later be played back on a PC or Mac connected to the network, or the recording file can be downloaded and played off-line, for instance during a flight. These recordings can also be viewed on handheld devices, and RADVISION demonstrated conference playback on an iPOD Touch.

David Bundy showing conference recording and playback on PC and iPod.

All in all, this was a very impressive demonstration of RADVISION’s new technologies and market leading features and products. To quote one of the senior analysts covering our industry, “it is nice to see RADVISION regaining its technology leadership, where they belong“.