I’ve already coined the term “unattended software spoils faster than yogurt in the desert sun.” It deals with my preference of hardware over software.

I guess that having this come from a software guy is a bit weird, but it is still true. In regards to the visual communications industry, it applies even more. We’ve just released our BEEHD product, which allows others to build and manufacture hardware based videophones. We’ve also just announced our partnership with Samsung, together creating a new LCD display that has built-in HD video calling capabilities. Both are hardware based solutions.

What make these solutions superior over software solutions are its peripherals, or more specifically, the fact that you don’t really need them.

Let’s take the Samsung VC240 as an example. It’s an LCD monitor. And that’s it. So:

• No need to connect it to a PC - you can, but it’s not necessary
• No need to buy and install a high quality HD camera - it’s already there, placed in the correct spot
• No need to invest in speakers or a microphone - they’re built into the screen, though, you can connect a headset for privacy

This also removes the need to install drivers, updating them, and making sure all the wires on your desk are de-tangled, yada yada yada.

Just look at what James MacLennan goes through for his first video conference. It’s mostly about peripherals:

I got quick feedback that my original camera position was disconcerting for the others. [...]

Microphone configuration is also very important; some folks are using headsets, while I use the microphone incorporated in the video camera. [...]

We are using inexpensive web cams, not highfalutin’ conference calling hardware. [...]

While James is happy with the results, he had a lot of work to do with the technology in order to be able to use it. That work was mainly peripherals configuration and software-tending.

Software is different than hardware - you need to install it, maintain in, and make sure it doesn’t clash with other applications on the same peripherals. And you need to do it periodically. With hardware it’s a simple matter of connecting the device to the network (and configuring it… once!).

It’s no wonder that Skype is targeting consumer electronics - it can easily increase their network size and usage. They know that hardware beats software, especially if you want to cater to larger audiences.

I’ve already stated my view on this: Desktop phones trump PC soft clients.

But do we really need desktop phones? While I can’t think about “living” without one at the moment, there are those who think otherwise.

A smarter person than me, Dave Michels, commented on that post I wrote:

I think there is an option 4 which is even more likely.

Clearly the desktop will take a percentage of some voice traffic - mostly associated with collaboration and video applications (can you recommend any?). And I agree, that the desktop is unlikely to replace the phone for basic “honey, pick up some eggs” uses. But the desktop phone is doomed none the less.

The problem is the desktop phone has not kept up. In fact, it offers the exact same value proposition to us as it did to the previous generation. The technology has changed (per your voip is dead post), but the value, features, use, remain unchanged.

10 years ago a cell phone was an alternative to the deskphone. Price and quality traded for mobility. But the cell phone is now much more - it is our directory, our clock, our email, our Twitter, our SMS, etc. Now we defiantly use our cell phones right at our desk, because it is easier.

As our love affair with the cell phone grows - 3G, 4G, more apps, etc. and our desktops become more powerful for voice apps - the one thing that will get squeezed is the desktop phone.

Throw in a virtual number service, and some hosted PBX features and it becomes a tough sell for the desktop phone. They either get smarter and die (your media phone, but the cost/value prop won’t be there) or they go dumb (see recent post of mine on dumb PBX) or they go away.

That seemed a bit too farfetched to a provincial guy like me, but then again - I live in that small secluded island called Israel. One of our product managers just returned from a trip to Europe, where he met people from a large enterprise. What he said was, that wherever he went, there was something missing, but he couldn’t explain to himself what - until they entered a conference room, and the guy from that company plugged his mobile phone into a speaker and dialed. Yep, that company had no desktop phones. None. They use mobile phones instead.

So I have to take my words back - there’s a 4^th option, as Dave puts it, which is mobile phones (as desktop phones).

But there might also be a 5^th option: if you’re in to visual communication - something I believe is starting to really happen all around us - then you might just replace that LCD display you have on your desk with one that can be used as your Media Phone/Desktop phone/LCD monitor/Personal video conference client. That’s exactly where I think we might be headed with the new VC240 display, that was just launched by Samsung and RADVISION.

And why would that be any different than a Desktop phone?

• Because you’ll need an LCD at your desk anyway.
• If you need video, then it’s easier to deal with than any software solution (no installation, no drivers, no peripherals, no extra hassle).
• If it can do video, it can also do voice.
• It connects to your PBX or UC solution.

So yes, the desktop phone is probably doomed. Who will be the one to take that final swing will be interesting to see.

[On his last post here, Amir Zmora promised to get back from InfoComm with insights from the show and share with us feedback from the launch of the SCOPIA VC240. Well, he is back.]

InfoComm is over and as promised I’m getting back with some insights from the show and with an answer to the question I’ve asked on my previous post: Is SCOPIA VC240 going to be a game changer? Tsahi already provided his answer about this here.

Striving for Video to the Desktop

RADVISION has long been saying that video in the meeting room is great but for it to really be used daily, massively, practically for any call, it should be on every desktop. RADVISION has even taken actions in this direction, with SCOPIA Desktop delivering HD video to the desktop.

But even with this change in direction happening, the options one has for video to the desktop are somewhat limited: you either have to spend big bucks on an executive solution priced in the sub $10K level or go for a soft client solution at an affordable cost. The big bucks option is available for some years now, but it didn’t bring video to the masses. Just show me an enterprise willing to spend the money to put such a solution on every manager’s desktop.

Soft clients are great, but they have some issues:

1. CPU overload - they requires a strong PC to enable HD video
2. CPU race condition - other applications running on the PC are competing on PC resources, which results in unexpected video quality degradation.
3. Peripherals, peripherals, peripherals - the user needs to add a bunch of peripherals, such as HD camera, mic and speakers, install them and make the whole thing work.
4. Peripheral race condition - user needs to handle various issues, such as another application suddenly taking control over his speakers or streaming audio into the call taking over the mic.
5. Not stand-alone - The PC must be turned on to make a call.

Given this, we see that there’s a big gap in the market, and a big need for a stand-alone, self-contained, affordable desktop level HD video solution.

Yes, We Can!

Well, where there is a need there is a way. The SCOPIA VC240 is filling exactly that gap, and that is why it is a game changer. Until not long ago video to the desktop was just talking heads, were the value of video was limited, as you didn’t really get a clear picture of the people you were talking with. This changes completely when you switch to HD. Today everything is ready for bringing high quality video to the desktop: the technology (DSPs, Codecs), the network and the day-to-day habits of most of us, using video communication on IM clients such as Skype, Yahoo or MSN. The change, as of last week, is that now there is also a solution that supports this need. Together - Samsung, RADIVION and our partners - we’re making it happen.

Amir, at the Samsung booth, next to the Samsung VC240

We can change this market, grow it and make video calling a common practice. This is great news for all parties in the market: Users who will be gaining higher value from their video products and vendors who will increase their revenue as the market as a whole will grow.

[We've just announced our Samsung-RADVISION VC240 HD videoconferencing LCD monitor and our BEEHD videophone engine. What we've noticed is that customers tend to ask a lot about our video codec in these products. Amit Klir, our "resident media specialist" for BEEHD explains what makes the video codec in our client product so great]

As when giving a gift, customizing it makes the gift so much more effective: the same hold true with video codecs. When looking for one, you need to think of what it is going to be used for. You need to make sure that the codec you choose is going to optimize the task at hand. The best of video codecs are application-dependent, allowing you to get the most bang for your buck.

Amit Lavi, the product manager of the BEEHD, asked me to write a bit about what it is that makes our video codec perfect for visual communications purposes. Here’s the list that I came up with (though there are more benefits than those enumerated here):

Realtime

Visual communication happen in real time. In order to send an encoded video stream that is coming at you at 30 frames per second, through a remote video stream it has to follow real-time constraints by encoding each one of the frames in 1/30 of a second. If It doesn’t, you’re going to either lose frames or overflow. Doing all of this in high definition is hard- really hard 108,000 macroblocks have to be processed each second in order for high definition real time visual communication to happen. That’s a lot.

When talking about our embedded BEEHD product, we are using the TI DM6467 processor. This processor includes multiple hardware accelerators for H.264 coding. While the DM6467 is a great multimedia processor, it is quite complex, as it packs together a co-processor, a DSP, a DMA engine and memory cache. It was important for us to use the DM6467 efficiently, so we took the time to design the codec in a way that will take advantage of all these hardware components.

Low Latency

While real-time constraints are important but there’s also the issue of latency. Have you ever seen live broadcastings of people communicating from different countries? The anchor asks a question, and then waits for a few seconds until the reporter “on the ground” hears the question on his side. This annoying pause is what latency is all about.

When talking about visual communications, you want the latency to be as low as possible. The rule of thumb is that latencies of over 200 milliseconds are annoying.

In visual communication systems, the path the video stream has to go through is quite long, and each of the tasks along the path may affect latency. The main cause for latency is the codec’s processing time and the network.

An H.264 HD video encoder yields frames that are too big to send over the network. This is why an H.264 frame used in visual communication is split into slices. Codecs will usually work on the frame level requiring the media system to split the encoded frames into slices before sending them and then compounding the sliced network packets back into frames before decoding them.

In order to reduce the latency as much as possible, our codec encodes and decodes the video on the slice level instead of the frame level, giving us several advantages as it removes the need for the media system to deal with frame fragmentation and it enables us to send packets before a full frame is encoded thereby speeding up the process and reducing latency.

~280 milliseconds end-to-end latency in BEEHD
* over 140 milliseconds attributed to an external off-the-shelf camcorder)

Rate Control

There are two common rate control techniques in video coding: VBR and CBR. In real-time visual communications, only CBR is acceptable, as the nature of VBR will cause bursts in bandwidth utilization, leading to delay and packet loss.

CBR vs VBR

CBR means that the “budget” of bits for a constant period of time should not vary. For visual communications, that period of time is usually fixed to a short time period - about a second. In such cases, it is important that the granularity in which the rate control mechanism used will be as small as possible, in order to maintain the video quality in the encoder.

While some encoders use frame level granularity (3600 macroblocks for HD), our codec’s basic unit for rate control is several macroblocks in size, which is why we are able to distribute our “budgeted” bits efficiently without losing quality.

Rate Distortion Optimization

This one is not specific to visual communication and makes sense to any video application. When encoding video, you make compromises; you lose data for the sake of being able to compress and send it over the network. Under a constraint of a given rate, you apply some distortion to the video you capture and encode. The biggest issue is how to optimize the captured video so that the distortion will be as low as possible.

The H.264 standard provides many (some say too many) modes allowing you to encode a macroblock. Picking the best mode means getting the best quality over a given rate. Only problem is - selecting the right one requires a lot of computation that needs to happen in real-time.

Putting is simply, our codec is rate-distortion optimized.

Summary

While the issues above make our codec an excellent choice for visual communications, we do have an added bonus: we’ve got SVC support in it as well, making it robust against network losses - and that’s what really makes all the difference in the world.

It’s my pleasure to announce  our  newsletter that we’ve started publishing this year called “Realize VoIP“.

It is a bi-monthly newsletter which presents the latest updates about the V²oIP industry, our standards, RADVISION’s products and activities, as well as a wide selection of technical articles that you will find very beneficial.  In addition, you can find past issues of our newsletter.

What can you find in this newsletter?

• General articles related to the VoIP industry, keeping you up to date with standardization and market trends
• Updates on new versions and product releases from RADVISION
• News from our developer community
• Highlights from our blogs
• Collection of significant press releases and news items
• Information on events and webinars

If you are enjoying my blog here, you are definitely going to enjoy the newsletter. I promise it won’t  bore you - it contains articles that don’t find their way into this blog.

What’s next?

Tomorrow, we will be publishing our second issue of the newsletter, which will focus on our high definition video offering for developers. I am inviting you to subscribe to the newsletter - you’ll receive the newsletter every other month from us via email.. At any point in time, you can decide to unsubscribe using a simple link visible in each and every issue of the newsletter. But why would you want to?

This week, we announce the joint project of RADVISION and Samsung, who together, created a “desktop video conferencing solution that will revolutionize the high definition desktop video market.”

I will not ponder on what exactly this solution does - as Amir Zmora already did that for me, talking about the Samsung VC240 .

I will also refrain from telling you all about how proud I am to be part of the team that worked on this cutting-edge project.

Instead, I will try and explain why I believe this announcement will really revolutionize the video conferencing market.

Samsung VC240, in our booth at InfoComm 2009

If you’ll look at Wainhouse Research’ Industry Statistics for Q1/09 (pdf), you will see that they are split into 3 segments:

• Room-based
• Executive Desktop
• Infrastructure

This means that there are only two options for the various types of business users of video conferencing technologies:

1. Room systems, where the main “theme” is getting together in one big happy room.
2. Executive desktop, where you get a desktop system, if you’re high enough in the hierarchy of your organization.

To tell you the truth, both of these options don’t work for me: there aren’t that many conference rooms in most companies (at least not compared to the amount of employees or telephones), and there aren’t many executives (or at least I hope not). This reality places video conferencing in a glamorous niche market that isn’t accessible to people who really want/need to use it.

This is where the Samsung VC240 comes in, it is an “executive desktop” kind of a system that can be put on employees desktops. And while its ridiculously low price seems like one of the strongest advantages of this endpoint, it excels in other areas as well - great video quality, on a great LCD display, with all the relevant peripherals inside a single “package” - no more connecting different devices and finding peripherals that will make it work.

As a matter of fact, you can think of it as a room system inside a personal display, or as a desktop software client embedded in an excellent LCD screen. I like to think of it as the way of moving forward in the communication industry, no longer being shacked to meeting rooms or executive ivory towers but rather having the freedom of it all being part of your own work desk (and work tools).

For more information on this great solution, visit our website, where you can find information on the Samsung solution, as well as the SCOPIA VC240, our own branded version.

[Amit Lavi is the product manager of BEEHD, our brand new product which lets you develop high definition videophones a lot faster. He took the time to write this guest post in order to present the new BEEHD to you]

Video is becoming an integral part of our lives - you can see it everywhere. There are users who film, upload and publish their videos online to people wanting to communicate visually with others - either through software applications or in large enterprise room systems.

We’ve seen this trend for a while now, and to be frank - without this specific trend, our friend, Sagee from the Video over Enterprise blog would be out of words (and out of work).

If we focus on visual communications, it is important to look at the current market characteristics. Over the decade, few companies have been providing enterprise systems, and only a few internet-focused communication solutions have added video to their offered services. Now that there is a growing need, it is time for more developers to join the market and provide their own video based solutions.

This is why we worked hard to create a brand new product, one that will allow developers with little or no knowledge of video communications, to be able to add this technology to their product. We called this new product BEEHD.

What exactly is BEEHD?

Simply put, BEEHD is a complete software framework that includes everything you need in order to easily integrate interactive videophone applications into your product. This includes signaling, media and application API’s which  allows easy integration into the complete framework.

What does it include?

• High Definition Video Telephony, using H.264, up to 720p@30fps
• HD Voice support, using G.722.1 and G.722.2
• Built-in configuration and management modules
• Interoperability with SIP- and H.323- based video communication products
• Unique SVC-based error resiliency technology for improved quality of experience, on any network.
• Development kit optimized to run on the TI DM6467

I find BEEHD exciting, because for the first time we provide a complete framework solution for developers. Now they have nothing to worry about. All that is needed is a nice user interface; we take care of all the rest.

The complete BEEHD solution takes care of all video telephony requirements, from signaling to call control and media components. With interoperability, media quality and user experience in mind, the BEEHD client is easy to integrate and manage for it incorporates special mechanisms to reduce latency and improve video quality.

You are more than invited to visit our website and get more information on the BEEHD product.

I would also like to hear your thoughts and get your feedback on this new product, as this is going to be a growing and breathing product.

[Amir Zmora is now on his way to InfoComm and is as excited as I am about the announcement of the new HD Video Conferencing Desktop Solution, which was a RADVISION and Samsung joint project. He wanted to share his enthusiasm with you and he is waiting to hear your feedback about this new and innovative project.]

As I’m getting ready for the long flight from Israel to Orlando, I’m all excited about the announcement of the joint project between RADVISION and Samsung for a new, affordable desktop Video Conferencing solution. This project is something we have been working on for some time now. Basically, it is a cooperation between Samsung, which is well known for its leadership in providing the best LCD based products and holds the world’s #1 market share in many of these items including computer monitors and TVs, and RADVISION, who is the pioneer of video over IP communication. We have commanded significant role in shaping the standards for this market from its very beginning. As such, we have the leading technology for all the components required for building a High Definition (HD) Video Communication device including codecs, signaling, call control and advanced video technology allowing us to deliver high quality video over unmanageable networks which normally have a high level of packet loss.

So in a nutshell, what is this product?

The VC240 is an All-in-One, 24″ computer monitor  with a standalone HD Video Conferencing device, which has  a few different modes of operation. It can be a computer monitor, a video endpoint, or  it can function simultaneously as both. When a call comes in, the screen splits, causing the video session to be placed on one side, and the computer display on the other. Based on the user’s preference, they have the freedom to switch between various layouts, all by using a very convenient remote control. The monitor itself is widescreen (16:9) making the experience of splitting the screen user friendly, thereby  avoiding the need to compromise viewing quality for any of the 2 parallel tasks.

The video endpoint is a complete standalone, with voice and video coding, as well as encoding the actual application running in the monitor. It is equipped with powerful DSPs that offloads this computing intensive task from the PC. It also includes an HD camera, speakers and 2 microphones so all you need for this baby to start working is to connect the Ethernet cable (use the internal switch to connect the PC if needed) and power it up. Configuration can be automatic through pre-integration with management systems such as RADVISION’s iVIEW Management Suite or it can be done  manually.

Of course, it supports all the features one would expect from such a device including standard and interoperable signaling protocols, SIP & H.323 as well as high quality H.264 video codec and HD voice.

So what’s so special about this product?

When you look at the source of this product, you understand the significance of it. A desktop level video endpoint coming from Samsung, with RADVISION technology in it, has the power to make a significant change in the video market. Samsung has the efficacy  to bring products to the masses, thereby accomplishing the goal of this product and allowing it to reach its full potential. It can make video on the desktop a dream come true. Now that we will start showcasing this product publically, I am looking forward to hearing feedback about it. Will this product be viewed as a game changer in the video market or not? My personal view is YES, YES and YES. I promise to come back with a post after the show and tell you what was the feedback we got from those who have seen it… so stay tuned.

Now that we just launched our brand new and shiny SCOPIA Desktop 7.0 - a software based video conferencing client, I can finally get to say why I like hardware so much more than software

BUT… before the vultures all around our industry begin to use my one-liner above against me, I’d like to say that SCOPIA Desktop 7.0 really rocks! It’s a great solution for all the good reasons, especially if what you’re looking for is a desktop based solution.

Tsahi’s Law of Software

If you’re reading this, you probably know by now I’m a software kind of a guy. When those hardware people start talking to me about heat sinks or logic analyzers I become dizzy. I like things to work in 1’s and 0’s, without any complexities of outside interference from heat or malfunctioning chips, and without knowing what are the current levels that enable this.

On the other hand, once the hardware is done, released to the market and is pretty stable, I have to admit it is the horse to bet on. Especially when you compare it to software, which tends to “break”. Larry Page, Google’s co-founder, coined the term Page’s Law, which states that “software gets twice as slow every 18 months”. I’d like to try and form a new law right here. Tsahi’s Law: “unattended software rots faster than yogurt in the desert sun”

As a software guy I can tell you: no software lives without maintenance, and it should be handled with the greatest care.

It means that on almost any given PC, software will be the main cause of most malfunctions, which brings me to why I hate software.

Why I prefer hardware on software

If you have any Computer Sciences education you probably know that the surrounding environment tends to view you as an “expert” in “fixing computers”. Today, I am the (un-)happy “takecarer” of 4 different households, when it comes to the home computers. I tend to my wife’s PC, my mom’s, my sister’s and my neighbor’s. Somehow, they think that just because I went to university and got myself a CS degree, I am the guy to deal with their hazardous internet downloading habits.

I have found myself installing the latest version of antivirus software this past month on all these machines, uninstalled a “download accelerator” from my neighbor’s computer and dealt with my mom changing the layout of her Microsoft Word toolbars to a point where she was unable to find the “print” button.

I hate it.

My mother asked me last year what I wanted for my birthday. I told her I wish she would find a computer whiz-kid and invite him over whenever she invites me for coffee - I’d rather spend the time with her than with her computer. Didn’t help, of course.

Software is great if you know what you’re doing

For me, software is great. I know how to install it, maintain it and use it. Give me software any day of the week. But for people like my mom, I’d rather buy a hardware thingy that stays in one piece and takes all that maintenance work away from me.

Anatoli already did a great job of covering the HD Communication Summit - a very successful gathering of people from our industry, trying to (re-)push towards the use of wideband voice codecs for VoIP services, so that we will once and for all be able to hear each other properly.

While most experts will explain that HD voice is more than just a codec (for all the good reasons), the main obstacle that I see here is actually THE codec. Or rather the lack of THE codec.

Take a look at the following list of wideband codecs I’ve gathered here from the top of my head:

• G.722
• G.722.1
• G.722.1 Annex C
• G.722.2
• Siren 14
• Siren 22
• AAC-LD
• AAC-LC
• Skype’s SILK

And I’m sure there are more - I am no voice codec expert myself.

These codecs vary in a lot of different ways, such as sampling rate, bit rate, computational needs, etc. And still - they are all wideband codecs, suitable for “HD Voice”.

Take a look at HD Video - there is only one de-facto codec: H.264. You might use the AVC flavor of it, or the new SVC flavor; but H.264 is THE codec.

Until we come to terms about THE codec for HD voice, we will continue to just talk about making it a commonplace.